


Ghunum Mànan

by gwenever



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings (Movies)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Arranged Marriage, Canon Related, Drama, Dwalin & Thorin Oakenshield Friendship, Dwarven Ones | Soulmates, Erebor, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hybrids, Introspection, King Thorin, Love/Hate, Marriage of Convenience, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Non-Canon Relationship, Protective Thorin, Royalty, Slow Build, Soulmates, What-If, filiandkilideath
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23925454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwenever/pseuds/gwenever
Summary: Thorin survided the Battle of the five Armies, a sound of a horn saved his life, but Fili and Kili died. With no heirs now Thorin will have to make a choice, get married or let the Durins line dissapear.On the other hand Ghìda, a half elf divided between two races, will have to reckon with her dark past and accepting herself and the king of Erebor as his OneTwo souls full of pain and remorse, looking for their place under the Mountain and above the stars.
Relationships: Thorin Oakenshield/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 40





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> author's corner
> 
> Hi, sorry for English is not my main language, if there are some mistakes please tell me, especially for past tense verbs. I'm writing this story in Italian, but it seemed a good idea to bring it in English too. Please leave a comment and, tell me if it pleases you. For now, I have 6 chapters already wrote in Italian, every time I update in Italian I will also update in English. See ya at first chap. <3

**_PROLOGUE_ **

The sun shone behind the huge Lonely Mountain, its rays barely illuminating the scene beneath it, whilst the cries of war created such a lullaby that even the gods stopped to listen. It was like the prayers of the now fallen warriors on the battlefield. The ogres were piled upon each other as they overwhealmed the last remaining dwarf troops and the few dozen remaining elves, who were no longer fighting for Thranduil but for themselves and their honour.

They fought under the careless eyes of their lord. His battle was already over; the battle of the King under the Mountain had just begun.

Thorin pulled himself over the slab of ice as the pale ogre approached him, holding a huge block of stone in his hand, connected to a chain that went up his arm to his shoulder. The snow slammed on Thorin's face as he slowly advanced towards Azog, almost as if to hold him back, to avoid the battle that would almost certainly have been his defeat but, by the gods, he would have killed the advocate of his anger. He looked up for a moment at the remains of the tower, where the bodies of Fili and Kili lay in a mixture of stone, snow and blood. His heartbeat quickened and he could clearly feel a roar rising towards his throat accompanied by an intense pain in his chest.

His nephews were gone.

His family was wiped out by a single being, who was right now charging at Thorin, dragging the block of stone. The king let out a roar full of pain and dodged the blow, then tried to plunge his blade into the flesh of his opponent. The blows were strong and the ice underneath the two began to break, creating slabs of ice that did not make the fight easier. Thorin had to avoid striking the ogre several times in order not to risk falling into the freezing waters. His hand trembled as the roaring ogre tried to strike a blow towards his legs, at which he dodged, lunged forward, and wounded the ogre in the stomach, who with a jerk of his arm wounded the dwarf's face from forehead to eye. Thorin groaned and felt the blood trickle towards his throat, as well as his chest rising. He knew he could not defend himself for long, and that if he hadn't overpowered Azog momentarily, he would not be able to go on anymore.

The same situation was happening ten meters below him, where the armies kept decimating each other without getting any closer to victory. Wheezing, Thorin looked at the ogre who was holding his stomach and then down from the frozen waterfall. He saw Azog’s troops overpower those of the dwarves and races fighting alongside. The ogre looked up and slowly advanced towards Thorin with a triumphant gaze.

"Not only will your bloodline be destroyed, dwarf, but your whole race as well!" he grinned whilst some black blood came out of his mouth "Garuga!" he shouted and began to rush towards Thorin, who gritted his teeth and held his sword with both hands, giving himself strength and ready to defend.

He was staring straight into the eyes of the beast, and the eye now stained with blood from his forehead opened further to get a good look at the enemy. The ogre let out a scream that made even Thorin's bowels tremble, but over it came another sound, not a scream, a horn. It overcame the fear of the king, who watched the ogre freeze and look behind him, his eyes wide open as a second rumble of the unknown horn resounded in the air. The moment was perfect, Thorin charged forward and with a single slash he pierced the belly of the ogre from side to side, throwing him on the ice and leaping on top of him.

"For my people, for my nephews, for my grandfather, for Erebor" roared the dwarf between his lips, pushing the blade through Azog chest as the eyes of the ogre flashed for the last time.

All Thorin's pain, anger and suffering poured into that slash as he screamed. Sound of galloping could be heard in the background, and a third horn blare echoed around the valley. Thorin looked up from the enemy's corpse. He looked down into the valley and widened his eyes as hundreds of dwarf soldiers came down the slope to finish off the remaining ogres. Kneeling on the cold ice and moving away from Azog's corpse, he stumbled to take a better look at the valley, clinging to the rocks next to him. He let his eyes wander towards the direction from where the troops came.

From the high hill the dwarves ran towards the battle, but a detail caught the his eye, a detail that left him perplexed: a pony was leading the troops and on it, even if with blurred eyesight, Thorin could see a woman holding a white dwarf horn in her hands. She was watching the battle and screaming inciting the dwarves to fight.

"For Ere...! For the ...ain! For the King!" he could hear but the sounds became distant and his breath grew heavy.

He lay beside the ogre's corpse, looked up at the sky for a few seconds, and then turned his head towards the bodies of his nephews. They had lost their lives too soon, just to follow him. A feeling of guilt pierced him in the chest like a blade and, letting a single tear run down his face, he let himself go, feeling the darkness envelop him. The last thing he heard were the cries of the eagles and Bilbo screaming his name, accompanied by the sound of the horn that had saved his life.


	2. Starting over

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Authors Corner  
> Here's the first long, full chapter. I had to deal with several elements, several parentheses that had to be closed by the canon and it was not easy to say. Above all, I tried to include as many dwarves as possible, or at least those who safely remain in the canon will remain in Erebor. I also tried to keep Thorin as faithful as possible to the original of the film. I apologize for the final description a bit out of place, but I'm never particularly good at introducing new characters. Please tell me what you think about it and especially if you think there are some serious flaws that can be corrected during the chapters, especially in terms of characters and characterization. To the next chapter. :)

**Starting over**

He heard voices in the distance, like whispers. He couldn't distinguish the tones; it was just a mechanical rumble in his head, feeble whispers as light as feathers. They didn't even make sense in his mind. Thorin saw nothing, the darkness continued to drown him, not a light, not a sign, nothing that could bring him out of that darkness.

The voices continued to speak, louder now and, almost as if he were coming up from the depths of a lake. He could hear his breath as his hands clutched at first touch what seemed like furs.

His body was gripping him in an unspeakable way, every breath seemed like a well settled stab, and when he tried to open his eyes, to identify where he was, an intense light hit him making him close them a little bit more.

His eyes slowly became accustomed to the colours and light, heavy as boulders. He found it difficult to open them, but from small blurred patches above him, he slowly managed to identify the shapes surrounding him.

Green-blue fabrics were on and around him, an acrid smell of blood ran down his nostrils, it didn't take him long to realize it was his own blood.

Out of the corner of his eye he picked up a sparkle. His armor, torn and stained with blood was placed next to his bed and next to it, Orcrist covered in dark blood was resting on a stool.

The pain and confusion that clouded his mind was replaced by an awareness of what had happened: he had killed him. He had killed Azog.

But at what price...? A silent anguish took possession of him, fragments of images came back to him; the ice, the blood, the faces of Fili and Kili in the snow. A slow, guttural sigh came out of his mouth. It wasn't supposed to end like that, it couldn't have ended like that. It was all his fault, only his.

He stared intensely at the dirty blade, as the world around him disappeared, and the figures of his two boys appeared before him like distant ghosts. He would never see them again, he would never scold them, he would never tell them the great actions of the kings of the past. He would only let slip one tear, and that's all he could afford.

  
"Kili...Fili..." A silent moan came out of his mouth.

Their faces began to disappear quickly, replaced again by the chair with his sword on it, whilst a voice was bringing him back to reality.

  
"Thorin, Thorin, can you hear me? Bofur call Òin, please, for God's sake."

He slowly turned his head still with his eyes half half-open, looked up and to his great surprise, Master Baggins was looking at him with shiny eyes smiling.

"Thorin, Thorin look at me, stay alert Thorin."

  
Sensing a hand squeezing around his arm he opened his eyes a little more and moved his free hand towards the hobbit. Was it real? Was anything at that moment real? Was the battle won? With that little bit of strength he was able to use, he squeezed his forearm slightly, looking into his eyes.

  
"Is it over?" He could only ask, finally opening his eyes and gasping for air, but an intense twinge made him tighten his jaw and squeeze his eyes.

"Damn it!" he moaned.

  
Bilbo squeezed him even tighter, nodding fast as he looked worriedly towards the dwarf's chest.

  
"Yes Thorin, it's over, now stay still, please" he said, holding him down. "Òin will be here any minute. You're not strong enough yet, please stay still."

He insisted and Thorin had to accept that not moving was the best idea.

He stared with eyes full of pride, but like a blow to the chest the images of Fili and Kili came back to him, making him fall even further into the pillow.

  
"Fili, Kili..." he whispered as he looked at Bilbo and left his arm flat, while the latter sighed and turned his smile into an expression of melancholy.

Bilbo shook his head and let go of the dwarf's arm, and there he realized it was really over. Everything was, the war but also his bloodline, all for Erebor.

He looked away from the hobbit biting his lip and thought of his sister. If he could, he would not tell her. She was not strong enough to face such a mourning. Not again.

  
"Here I am Bilbo! Oh Thorin you are awake at last." The voice of the Ori made him look up, abruptly diverting him from his thoughts.

"Please move." He turned to Bilbo, who nodded quickly and walked away from the bed, but remained very attentive to Thorin's movements.

Clumsily, the old dwarf approached the bed holding the receiver in his ear, holding a bag in the other one, which he placed gently on the floor.

With his arm not immobilized by the bandage, he tried to sit up. His pride always prevailed over his common sense. But quickly the old dwarf shook his head. "No, no stop, Thorin. You haven't recovered your strength yet."

  
"I'm fine." he reassured him, but he was betrayed by a guttural groan that escaped him as he sat down, that no matter how hard he tried not to emit, had escaped out of him.

Bilbo looked up to the sky. "If you keep moving, you'll hurt yourself more than you already are."

  
"I said I'm fine." he replied in a tone that did not accept replies, and even if there were any, he would not listen to them. Clutching his eyes with one last effort, he sat down with his back resting on the back of the bed.

  
He noticed Bilbo's resigned gaze and whilst Ori was about to untie the bandages that covered his chest, Balin and Dwalin, one beside the other, entered the tent panting slightly.

Watching him intensely, they closed the fabric behind them and with a short bow of their heads, they put a fist on their hearts. They attracted Thorin's full attention, which distracted him from the annoyance of the bandages that were taken off his chest.

  
"My King." they said in unison, before they looked him in the eyes smiling again. Balin was doing so more than his brother, who with his arms crossed to his chest, made his gaze pass over him.

"Just a little while longer, though, if he doesn't let himself get cured." he laughed as he moved away from the exit and further into the middle of the room. Thorin said nothing but in response let his head rest and breathed slower.

  
"Are you all right?" he asked, looking serious but full of pride, pride not for himself but for his people.

  
The two nodded whilst Òin tried -with kindness and care- to remove all the bandages from his chest.

"We're all fine. A few scratches but nothing that won't heal," Dwalin replied, turning slightly, allowing them to see a cut on the back of his neck.

  
"You had us worried, boy." said Balin, putting his hands behind his back and approaching his bedside.

  
"The wounds are not serious, just very painful. On the other hand, you've been unconscious for a long time." added Òin removing the last layer of cloth on his chest. He finally managed to look at his chest and biting his lip he realized the truthfulness of his words. A huge cut mutilated his chest, whilst purple contusions larger than an arm surrounded him, not to mention the shoulder he could barely move.

"One cut across, lad,and two broken ribs A few minutes more of hesitation and you would have been no longer able to breathe." he said looking at him and then smiled sadly under his beard.

"But nothing breaks a Durin." he added with an almost triumphant tone, but he did not feel so triumphant.

Thorin tried to speak but his voice cracked. "My nephews..."

  
"They will have a worthy burial, Thorin." Dwalin interrupted him, looking at him earnestly and resting his hand on Balin's shoulder, only to move closer to his bedside. Ori, unable to look him in the face, tied the last round of clean bandages on his chest.

"They died like heroes and as heroes they will be celebrated." he assured him he couldn't control but melancholy made his voice tremble slightly.

  
"They were good boys and good warriors, and the whole Middle Earth must know it!" Thorin roared as he sat on the side of the bed, but couldn't add a groan of pain this time, but it was confused with the pain he felt deep inside his chest, an incurable pain.

  
"Thorin stay still for heaven's sake..." Bilbo could not finish the sentence as Thorin had already got up from the bed, holding on to the wooden column next to him.

  
"Even the elves must know, all of them!" he roared deeply, gasping as his hand held him.

  
At those words Balin bit his inner lip shaken. His brother noticed him, glancing sternly at him. Thorin, who was not looking at them, walked slowly towards the table in the middle of the room with his clean clothes, helped by a hold on Òin's arm.

Balin was extremely nervous, pulled like a string from a bow. He had to bite his tongue, it was not the time to reveal certain details. Not now, not yet, especially by the way Thorin had reacted, it was not the time at all.

  
In the meantime Dwalin put his blue shirt on a chair, and Thorin nodded in gratitude as he passed it over his head, holding back yet another groan of pain, leaving only his arm out with the bandage. An unnatural silence made him look up at the two brothers in front of him and then at Òin who dared not look him in the eye whilst he quickly cleaned the table.

Something was wrong, a sudden worry came forward in his chest.

  
"What aren't you telling me?"

  
"I-I think I'd better go and warn the others about your awakening, they'll be happy to see you," Bilbo said, quickly getting up from the stool he perched on, watching the exchanges in silence. He sneaked out of the tent without even giving him a glance.

He was a Hobbit, he had to take care of hobbit things. Politics was not his strong notion, he wanted nothing to do with it. All that mattered to him was that his friend was alive, the rest could wait another day.

  
Thorin watched Bilbo leave the tent. That behaviour was not like him, in fact, none of the behaviour of those present was usual. Something was wrong, he sensed it. He looked at Balin as he approached him with a sore shoulder.

  
"Is there anything I should know?" Pause. "Balin?" he asked him as he approached. The latter sighed and looked up from the ground to stare into his eyes.

This was not the time, but the young dwarf's eyes did not admit omission. Discouraged, he sighed, shaking his head.

"The Blacklocks Clan came to our rescue in the final moments of the battle. They were the reason for victory, Thorin."

  
Thorin suddenly turned his back. The Blacklocks. He had sent a raven to them too, to Telkar of the Yellow Mountains. He remembered the horn, and the young woman on the black pony leading the Dwarf troops. No, no, she was certainly a dwarf, not a human either. His mind must have played tricks on him.

  
"Is Telkar here?"

  
"Telkar is not here." Dwalin told him before Balin could answer. "He... sent an emissary, someone else as commander of his forces and as his voice accordingly."

Thorin was able to detect a point of frustration in his tone. He was about to add more, to ask for more, but Dwalin's hand resting on his shoulder.

  
"My king, there is time for everything, councils, assemblies and politics. But this moment is yours alone, all right..." pause. "Thorin Oakenshield?" He looked him in the eye, and Thorin nodded, his hand over his and let the questions go to the back of his mind.

"Ours alone." he added and looked at Dwalin and Balin with a light smile.

He walked for a long time through the battlefield, helping the various armies to load their dead on the chariots. Even though the pain in his chest had not passed and every movement cost him an inhuman effort, he could not stand in a tent looking at maps and charts while such pain lay before the gates of Erebor. Erebor that now had to be rebuilt, not only physically but also symbolically.

Halls, corridors had to become once again the refuge for his people. The fetid smell of Smaug had to leave not only that city but also his own mind, where he had generated his madness. No one, not even Bilbo said anything to the dwarf about the events before the battle. Not a word. No one held him responsible, even though he felt bound to the loyalty that his companions had shown him. Even Bilbo's loyalty, which in the end proved to be the most effective. But every gesture came back to his mind, when the frenzy had caught him. He had made so many mistakes, so many had died, for his greed. His nephews had died for his obstinacy.

  
The corpses of the orcs were piled up on one side of the mountain, no one had come to claim them, because their war had never happened. They were just pawns on a bigger chessboard. They set them on fire and their horrible smell spread over the whole valley.

The elves were fast, they covered their chariots with light veils while some of them sang painful and heart-breaking songs, even with what little he could understand. The sadness darkened his heart. Many Elven lives had been lost by a king, who wanted nothing but his white gems. Thorin didn't know that he could not hate Thranduil as much as he hated himself at that moment. But did the elves really have a grudge against him?

Thranduil's reasons were no different than his own. All this had to stop, the constant rehashing of events had to stop. Kili would have agreed with him. Thorin had seen him at Mirkwood, how he looked at that elf. He had heard them talking beyond the bars, when they thought no one was listening.

The company had told him what she had done for his nephew at the Dragon Slayer's house, when even he had abandoned him there. If Kili really loved that elf and the elf loved him back, why all this?

Men were very slow compared to the elves. Upon every corpse at least one woman cried, children sobbed holding their fathers' limbs as they were placed on the wagons. A young woman held her womb while holding a man's hand on the battlefield. Thorin would never get used to those scenes.

Dwarves from the Iron Hills and the Yellow Mountains helped each other to mount some great pyres in the middle of the valley, but there was not a trace of Telkar's adviser. Not that he hadn't tried to request his presence several times, but every time he asked Balin or anyone else, they changed the conversation.

The dwarves, like him, were also proud in their grief. They did not weep, they did not sing, not a sound came out of their mouths, but as Thorin did looking at the corpses of Kili and Fili on the marble tablets inside the palace hall, they wept invisible and silent tears in the shadow of the mountain.

  
The funeral ceremony was fast, too fast, as if everyone wanted to forget, wanted to wake up from a nightmare.

It happened on the very evening of the end of the battle. Pyres for the fallen were set up between Dale and the Mountain. Men and dwarves at the two ends of the battlefield watched the lighting of the pyres, silent. Silence reigned over the valley, nothing but the sound of the horn resounding heavy as a boulder in space, like a thunder before a storm. 

  
Thorin stood at the top of the balcony of Erebor with the crown on his head and all his company around him, who had squeezed into a tomb-like silence, watching the bodies of Fili and Kili being slowly turned to dust. With each blaze that rose, a piece of him was taken away. Each blaze that rose was a warning, a warning not to let what had happened happen again. He tightened his hand around his balcony brace with force, gnashing his teeth. He would never let it happen again, ever.

Gandalf, at the side of the balcony far from the company, with only Bilbo beside him, whispered ancient, sad, but words full of meaning that would accompany the fallen and purify their spirits.

With the elves already gone, he had the burden to lean out from the back of the balcony slightly and begin the funeral song that would bring the souls of all of them to the Halls of Mandos, with their fathers.

Bilbo observed Thorin; how his hands had turned white when he shook the marble. Even though he was trying to hide it, with little success, he knew that something was going on in his head. He knew that something had hopelessly broken. He had not requested Arkenstone, he had not returned to the treasure room even once after he had awakened. The hobbit looked at the dwarf's static face. Not a single emotion was revealed. If he had not known him, he would have said that the Thorin who was about to throw him off the bastion was still there, but his voice betrayed him; more hoarse, slower than it already was. 

During that song Thorin perceived, silent and invisible, the pain of all his companions on his back, as heavy as a boulder.

Bofur held Bifur's shoulder, sighing deeply as he watched the smoke rise high. Ori, so young and with a character so little tempered by loss, let silent tears run across his face, whilst his brothers looked at him, saddened. They stood as close to him as possible. All three found themselves thinking the same thing: no more. 

Thorin's words were in tune and in time with the light wind of the early evening hours. His eyes fixed on the pyres of his heirs, to whom he had made his burden suffer in equal measure to that which weighed him down.

As it happened when he defeated The Defiler, his gaze moved towards a figure in the distance, far from everyone watching the scene, down in the valley, a figure in a long black dress. He saw her turning her head only slightly to look at the horizon as his singing continued and turned to the end. He could not, as on the tower that morning, define her features, or her race, but it was her, he was sure it was her.

She turned her gaze only a few moments back to the pyres, and at that moment the figure was gone, again.

He finished singing and remained silent for a few minutes, hearing the other dwarves behind him silently leaving the balcony. The pyres continued to burn, and his gaze, no matter how hard he tried, could not detach itself from being.

  
"They would be proud of you Thorin, you have reclaimed their home. Don't blame yourself.” Bilbo approached him quietly and carefully. He had always considered his touch excessive, but at that moment it seemed the most appropriate thing to do.

  
"Now you are going home, aren't you Master Baggins?" he asked him, turning his head slightly away from the balcony, loosening his grip on the stone. "To your books, to your armchair, to your garden." Bilbo's smile made him sad, while pulling up his nose he looked away, as if it had made him uncomfortable. "I'm almost tempted not to let you leave Master Burglar."

  
It wasn't Bilbo's house.

He was deeply sad about that reality, he had accompanied him on his journey, without expecting anything in return. And what did he give him? Nothing but contempt and suspicion. It was not his home. During whole trip, Bilbo had almost driven him mad with his constant whining. He hated him deeply, because Bilbo had what was taken from him. The books for him were his forge. His garden, the corridors into the mountain. His armchair, his throne. 

  
"But I also know that this is not your home." Bilbo turned towards him with a sad smile and almost shiny eyes; while, as he had already seen during these months, when he was nervous, he was swinging on his feet.

  
"I will plant my tree," he said sadly and nodded his head, "And under it, I will remember you... all of you... all of you... Thorin, you, all of you, me...". He shook his head in distress before taking a breath and pointing his eyes into his "What I'm trying to tell you is that I... I will never forget you."

  
Those words were like a gentle caress in Thorin's soul. He did not know exactly what he felt, but the hobbit's kindness and loyalty stole a sad smile from him.

We would not answer him either, but his pride won out once again. Bilbo, thanking Aulë, seemed to understand that he nodded back smiling.

  
"My adventure is over, yes, sir." He said, swinging on his heels and looking down, not holding the king's gaze, "But I will take all of you with me, there will always be a place for dwarves at the Beggins house." he said, finally looking Thorin in the eye and smiling at him.

Thorin giggled with closed lips and nodded to the hobbit as he looked at the horizon.

"And there will always be a place in Durin's kingdom for a hobbit," admitted Thorin and in friendship, turned and held him smiling melancholily. "You are part of the Baggins family." he whispered to him as he walked away and put his hand on his shoulder. The hobbit sadly looked down on him.

  
"I will leave at dawn. The road is long, and Gandalf will accompany me, at least for a while hopefully," he said to Thorin, "I will say goodbye to the others tomorrow, but I suppose you will be busy, King Under the Mountain." He smiled at him and made a brief, clumsy, ungentlemanly bow, a Hobbit bow that made the king smile even more as the pyres illuminated the mountain.

The morning after, he woke up very late, but after months he woke up in a bed, his bed.

He had not slept peacefully, the wound on his chest was aching, every movement he made was a pain, and his nightmares had certainly not helped.

Visions of gold and fire had obsessed his mind, he had hoped that with the resumption of Erebor the nightmares would leave him alone, but it had not been so. All night long they had nagged him, making him wake up wet with sweat and panting several times.

He sat slowly on the bed with his face in his hands, taking long breaths and then passing both hands in his hair, getting up, with such speed that a terrible pain in his shoulder made him move forward.

  
" _Drack!"_ he roared in pain, holding himself with one hand on the wall and another bandage around his chest. That wouldn't have solved anything, he should have listened to Bilbo and stayed in bed. Curse himself and his stubbornness. Panting directed himself towards the mirror and with a moan he pulled himself straight up looking at the naked chest covered only by the enormous bandage. He untied it slowly, carefully, taking big breaths every time he felt a small twinge. The bandages were not stained with blood and that was good, the dressing had not moved. He struggled to make one last turn at the bandage and approached the mirror. The wound was not yet completely closed, but it was not fluid-secreting, it was clean, but the bruises on the shoulder and ribs were purple and evident. He understood the reason for so much torment as he turned around in bed, the more he moved, the more that pain would he feel.

Thorin took decisive steps towards the chest of drawers to his bed and pulled out a clean bandage. He wasn't going to have a full chest of drawers, he wasn't going to. It would only slow him down and weigh him down, he knotted the two foreign ends creating a circle with the cloth, and then passed it behind his neck and under his forearm as a support for his aching shoulder. Now came the difficult one, dressing without ruining everything. Wearing a shirt never seemed so complex, whilst wearing the slings cost him two groans of pain and twice as much expletives.

  
Then he looked up at the walls, adorned with golden friezes set in stone, he had not stopped to look at them the night before, before falling asleep, and he should have, so many memories came back to him.

The ancient royal chambers had been illuminated the night before, allowing the young king to reside in his fathers' chambers.

The air was heavy, he already felt the weight of his race on his shoulders, already the weight of being king, to be who he had always been destined to be.

He descended the long stairs after wearing his long cloak and crown. As he walked through the corridors that were to lead him down to the main hall of Erebor, he looked around him with incredulous air as the first torches finally illuminated the halls of the mountain and memories came to his mind. His life before the collapse of his world was different, very different, now the light of the fire had to take over not only the palace but also Thorin's hardened soul.

He descended the last flight of stairs to the side of the main hall. In the hallway of the palace, momentary curtains for the dwarves of the company had been installed above the golden floor. The hall was filled with dwarves carrying beams, stones and lanterns.

The rebirth of the dwarf city had begun.

The King could not hide a smile from the sight of dwarves. He had waited for this moment for so long. When he stepped over the stairs and all the dwarves around him stopped to work and looked at him, and then slowly put their hands on their heart out of respect. Thorin glanced towards them nodding and then looked for Balin with his eyes dodging the industrious dwarves, nodding with his head in response to "Greetings King Thorin" or "My King" while he walked.

He arrived almost at the entrance of Erebor before finding Balin looking up in the middle of the huge corridor. He was giving directions to Bifur who, with Nori, tied with ropes held by Glòin and Bofur, were trying to reposition Durin's coat of arms above the entrance arch. Thorin approached the old dwarf from behind, while he was distracted and cleared his throat, making Balin jump.

  
"Oh, my dear lad! Glad to see you've woken up, I was about to come to your room.” He said, turning to Thorin and then looking up and giving directions.

  
"I'm not as young as I was the last time we were in these halls." He squeezed his mouth slightly as he stood next to Balin who wouldn't take his eyes off from the four dwarves over them. "And I have not slept peaceful dreams." He added serious by casting a glance at the old dwarf who nodded seriously.

"Those nightmares again?" He nodded avoiding the worried look of the elderly dwarf next to him. He worried too much, he always did. "I'm all right, Balin." He told him dry, not wanting to go into the subject in depth, the talk would have touched some sore points for both of them anyway.

Balin sighed, shaking his head, not returning to the subject, but looking over his shoulder.

"In any case, you're right on time! In a couple of hours, the deal-making council will begin, lad." Thorin turned his head to the back of him looking at the door several meters above their heads.

  
"It might be full of surprises!" Balin whispered, hoping that Thorin would not hear him, but he heard him and well also. "Your first political event as King Under the Mountain!" he added as if to hastily erase the previous statement. Thorin sighed as he looked at the table and turned his head slightly.

“I hope I am as good a king as you taught me to be," he hoped, drawing his eyes away from the door.

  
"You will be, lad, you will be." Balin nodded, and Thorin sighed again, shaking his head, surrendering. They had confidence in him, when he himself did not at that moment.

In the following hours, the entire hall had been cleared. The dwarves not indispensable to the council had been sent outside to repair the damage caused by Smaug, whilst many others had been sent as emissaries outside the borders of Erebor, to return home the dwarves left scattered in the Wild Lands and the most remote places in Middle-earth.

In the council hall, a huge green granite table carved out of the rock was in the middle of room. Large chairs were placed around it, and were filled with faces of dwarves who were there to hear the will of the king, and the king was there to hear the will of their spokesmen.

He looked into the hall as his frightened companions stood at it with their backs resting on the huge dark green columns, only Balin dared to come closer to the table and nodded to the king looking down briefly as a sign of respect.

Thorin lay one hand on the table, sliding it along its entire length. There, for a long time, the greatest decisions of his fathers had been made, and that table and that room were second only to the throne room for importance in Thorin's heart.

An icy gust came from the end of the room that made his eyes quint at the huge door that opened wide.

Thranduil, together with two Elven guards, crossed the soya of the room, with his hands crossed behind his back and glancing towards every corner of the room, turning his head and moving his long neck. 

As much as he had promised himself to remain diplomatic, he could not control his emotions, he gritted his teeth, hated even seeing him in the sacred rooms but owed him much, he owed it to his people and to the fallen that Thranduil had sent to slaughter for his personal affairs. But was he any different?

Hard as it was for him to admit it, without the help of the elves, however circumstantial, and their bows, the battle would have been lost.

The long green cloak brushed the floor in silence, and as he approached the table, he gave the King a slight bow that Thorin perceived was done only out of duty, not loyalty.

"King Under the Mountain." he said as he raised his head slightly, "I hope that my stay in this room does not cause agitation in your subjects, as you see I have only two guards with me." he added, pulling himself up with his back and looking towards the dwarves around the room, who held their hands firmly on their axes and swords tied to their belts.

  
Thorin glanced at the elf and pointed to his chair, "Do you have so little faith in me, Thranduil?" he asked, looking down at him, holding his shoulder under his huge fur coat, receiving a sinister glance from Balin who disapproved of his statement. Bofur shook his head as he looked at Thorin, knowing that certain things would probably never change. He found himself thinking in a melancholic way hoping instead for a possible reconciliation between two races that had struggled too long.

Thranduil grinned as he slowly approached his right. "King Under the Mountain, I could ask the same question." And taking one last look at him, he sat slowly next to him and thanked him by crossing his legs and signalling to his guards to get behind him.

  
During the small debate, Bard had entered, unescorted, alone, looking around the room with wide open eyes, looking at the gigantic green walls that surrounded the room. Thorin said nothing whilst he was watching him, not being able to understand what a human being felt when faced with the greatness of Erebor, probably a once-in-a-lifetime emotion. Bard then looked towards Thorin and he bowed his head, looking down towards the floor without saying anything. To the latter, Thorin, without saying a word, pointed only to the chair next to Thranduil. He was not sure about both, but no one would have been able to do it in his place, after all that had happened only a few meters from those rooms.

His gaze rested first on one and then on the other until the door at the end of the room was opened, making a noise that rumbled for a few minutes inside all of Erebor.

Dàin with his warriors entered the room, spreading his arms and looking at his cousin.

" _Melhekhul!_ " he cried proudly, bowing too much theatrically, and laughing enthusiastically approached Thorin in a brotherly grip.

  
"The crown suits you cousin." He said as he approached him, scrutinizing him from top to bottom, wringing a slight smile from Thorin. He lingered on the blue cloak and patted him on the shoulder. "The cloaks are a little less pompous, but I'll get used to it," he laughed and then turned to Thranduil and Bard. "Oh look who we have here a little woodland elf and a dragon slayer!" He snickered, both fists resting on the bench, unleashing Thranduil's glance. "Dozens of dwarves have died for your silly little games, you makk an E ha'- "

  
"Dàin!" roared Thorin "No." Thorin asserted his statement by thinning his eyes, placing his hands on the table and looking at him. "Do you understand me, cousin?" he asked him, glancing at Dàin with a look that didn't admit any replies while. The other nodded and sat down next to Thorin, who in the meantime had to resist any impulse to unleash Orcrist tied to his belt.

  
"Yes, cou… my king." He ran to look at Thorin still standing above him. Slowly he sat at his seat at the head of the council, resting his back on the huge stone backrest. He shifted his hard eyes from Dàin to Dwalin, who was troubled by the event and was near the doors.

  
"The adviser of Telkar and his men, where are they?" Thorin asked, impatient, after the clash of the two sitting at his side. Dwalin shook his head in confusion as he watched the door closed. Silence hovered in the hall. To break it, a slight laughter came from Thranduil, almost a giggle that made Thorin spin confused and impatient.

  
"Is something troubling you?" Thorin asked as the veins near his neck widened, impatient. An elf's laughter turned not to him; he could accept everything but be belittled for his intelligence by an elf not.

  
"Adviser?" he asked, looking down on the dwarf king, "Did Mithrandir tell you he was a councillor? Or rather, did your companions tell you?" he said, turning his long neck towards the king again, resting his chin on his hand resting on the armrest. "Your dear cousin? Did he also use this term?" Thranduil asked again grinning.

  
Thorin looked first at Balin who quickly lowered his gaze and then Dàin who squeezed himself in his chair holding his axe with both hands still on his legs making his eyes two slits.

"An abomination that would not even have the right to enter these sacred halls." He growled tightening his jaw while still not looking at Thorin. "Rotten, stinking blood." He added, still not looking at Thorin. Bofur quickly approached Thorin, who couldn't see the guilty looks of his companions around the room. They could not notice his anger grow.

  
"Thorin, don’t..." Bofur didn't have time to stand next to the king and finish his sentence that the doors in the back of the hall opened and a dozen or so dwarves entered, followed by something that Thorin would never even have thought or imagined in his darkest nights.

Whispers echoed in the background when a girl, a bit smaller than him, advanced. She wore a long dress of different shades of green, dark as the marble of Erebor. An iron plate encircled her waist, inlaid with small bronze and silver geometric designs. Her uncovered shoulders showed a row of tattooed dwarf runes starting from her wrist and ending towards her shoulder where the long open sleeves of her dress began. Slightly pointed ears were visible from behind the long, wavy, braided brown hair, but left loose. Thorin opened his mouth slightly with hundreds of questions in his mind whilst the whispers became silent in his ears. He watched without moving a single muscle the girl take a long bow looking straight into his eyes with her two, dark wells.

  
"Ghìda, daughter of Telkar my lord." Said the girl in a tone marked " _Melhekhel_." She added, rising slowly. At that exact moment Thorin laid his gaze close to the girl's waist, he opened his eyes wide open.

A white horn.

It was her.

  
**_Drack=_ ** _Shit_

 **_Melhekhel=_ ** _My King_

 **_Melhekhul=_ ** _My Lord_

  
  



	3. Dirty Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s corner  
> And finally, after dozens of narrative and event changes, I present the second chapter. It was very difficult to move through the events, in fact I wanted to integrate this chapter in the previous one or make it a second part of the first chapter, but the changes of perspective were too many and I think it would have created confusion. What do you think? I'm trying to make the new characters as less caricatured as possible, even if the elves/dwarves/men hybrids are overused.  
> Well what to say: what do you think about Ghìda? Is a character that you like, dislike, your assumptions and everything that goes through your head, really. I'm very pleased to read the reviews to improve or change aspects that you think are wrong.  
> The dictionary will be put from now until the end of the story.  
> Many words are taken from forums, so if you are wrong I humbly beg your forgiveness.  
> <3 G.

The sun was now over the Lonely Mountain, the feeble rays illuminating the battlefield. The screams and noises of shields had stopped leaving only room for a desolation of bodies in the grass. Ghìda walked across the battlefield looking down, glancing at a single face and looking away as soon as she recognized one of her ranks.

Sharp eyes watched her. The shirt held up by the bodice seemed to get tighter and tighter beneath those glances. She could feel the dwarves' eyes on her, like the elves' ones, observing her every little move, and feeling every breath she took. The small groups assisting the wounded stopped every time she passed next to them, with hate-filled looks they scrutinized her, but she looked straight ahead and everytime she heard a curse in Khudzul against her, she ignored it as she continued to walk.

"Dirty blood!" she heard, roaring more clearly than the others from a dwarf who passed by her, walking on the opposite side of her path to the torn entrance to the mountain.

"A'lâju Mahal!" someone roared as they stood between her and the path spat on the ground. Ghìda's mind did not recall a single moment in her life when that word had not been used against her. It was her name, more than the one she was born with.

She clenched her jaw whilst her gaze was fixed forward, trying to avoid the look of the dwarves that were blocking her path. Moving her head slowly, only by a slight movement, she saw the Sylvan elves staring at her from the bottom of the valley, near the wall next to the mountain. Unlike the dwarves, however, they did not scream or say anything, they only looked at her in a twisted way, whilst others whispered among themselves.

The girl's self-control was rigid. At other times she would have turned and walked away, at even more remote times she would have started running with a blade in her hands. But not now, not here, not in those years of her life. A part of her knew that one misstep would cost her life. She only clutched her long green cloak around her shoulders and kept walking, hoping that at least in that situation, the dwarves' evil tongues were not just for her and that their forces would focus on the wounded and not on her. But she soon realized that her hope had been in vain.

"You won't tread a single step more, Elvish bastard!" Dàin stood in front of her like a rock only a few meters from the mountain entrance, spreading his shoulders and swelling his chest. "You don't even have the right to stand in front of these doors!" he roared, the dwarf with his face towards her full of contempt.

Ghìda stiffened looking at him and moving slightly to the side, trying to avoid him, but the latter didn't care and with more firmness he moved again in front of her. A sigh passed through the girl's lips.

"And I didn't come to argue with you Dàin, Náin's son."

"You forget who you're talking to, you dirty half-blood!" yelled Dàin ungodly in anger, pointing his axe at Ghìda's chest, who promptly brought her hand towards the hilt of her sword at her side -under her cloak- almost mechanically. Dàin was not the diplomatic type. For those times that she had met him in the Yellow Mountains, there had never been a discussion with him that ended peacefully, and the situation even in that case was not the best. She would have preferred to be against any dwarf, beast or elf, but not him.

"Get out of here or I swear on Aule that I'll smash your goblin's head in half!" he said as he kept pointing his axe at her chest. Whilst she held her head high and took deep breaths, all the dwarves who had moved away from her were now regrouping and placing their hands on their weapons.

Dàin's breath was now blowing on her face, watching her coldly as she slowly pulled up the blade, ready for any brusque movement of the dwarf in front of her.

"Dàin, that's enough!" A voice well known to the girl made her look upwards. A tall old man in a cloak and wide-brimmed hat approached the two of them.

Gandalf.

"This is not how we behave with allies! Now, if we can stop the nonsense, there are more important things to think about!" he added in an austere tone, looking first at Dàin and then to Ghída, pressing his stick further into the ground.  
Ghída was not yet calm enough to leave her hilt.

"It's none of your business, Gandalf the Grey. She won't go one step further. She's not a dwarf. She's nothing!" Dàin hissed through his teeth with contempt, spitting on the ground. That gesture made her stiffen. She clenched her fist even tighter on the apple of the long white blade. Her resolve to remain calm was shattered, she glanced with hatred at the dwarf, who did not notice how the girl was struggling to remain calm.

"This doesn’t change the fact that you aren't, Dàin, Lord of the Iron Hills, the Lord of Erebor," Gandalf calmly added, standing beside them.

Ghìda noticed Dàin's jaw clenching, whilst reluctantly lowering the axe and backing away from her face, and only at his signal did all the other dwarves around her do the same. She, on the other hand, felt a slight warmth as Gandalf's hand rested on her shoulder, making her immediately relax and leave the blade. The mere presence of the wizard had always calmed her. It had always been so, ever since she can remember.

"Very well." whispered Daín without taking his eyes off her. He made a brief sign with her head to the dwarves around him who then shuffled away, continuing their business. So did the Lord of the dwarves in front of her, who with one last grim glance, walked past her, carrying his huge axe on his shoulder. A sigh came out of her, looking up at the old man next to her.

"Some things are like stone; unchangeable and almost indestructible, my lady." said the wizard, looking at the girl with a gentle look, which made her feel anything but peaceful. In fact it made her stiffen and close up even more.  
She moved away from the sorcerer's touch and then bowed her head slightly as a greeting, but nothing more. She hadn't been a child for a long time and Gandalf still didn't understand it. At least that's what she thought,

"I have come to pay my respects and those of my clan to King Thorin." she said stiffly.

The sorcerer jerked slightly and stepped off the road, allowing her to see the entrance to the mountain: a group of six hardworking dwarves, with a hobbit, were entering and exiting a tent, carrying bloody bandages which they then threw into the fire.

"The king, I believe, is now in no condition to speak," he said, sitting on one of the stones that served as a bridge to the entrance to the mountain. "But you can talk to me," he added, pulling out a wooden pipe from under his long cloak.  
Ghìda shook her head looking at him, knowing perfectly what were the questions he wanted to ask her.

"No, I have to go to my soldiers." she replied quickly and turned, ready to walk back to the battlefield.

"Where is your father Ghìda?" the question made her stand there on the spot whilst a gust of wind blew her wavy, dark hair to the side of her shoulder.

"In the Yellow Mountains. He sent me to lead our army. We began marching on Erebor as soon as the raven arrived." Her teeth gnashed, thinking of how the subject, which she was trying to avoid, had been brought up. "Why don’t you trust him?" she whispered, turning her head slightly. Her father wasn't a good father, he never was, but he was still her father. "I'm here because he trusts me!" she said, turning her face towards the sorcerer and continuing to give him her back.

Gandalf noticed the resentment in her eyes and sighed, holding his stick with both hands. His eyes became thin as they studied her. He knew that the loyalty to her father, senseless as it was, would not even bend to his words.

"Very well." he said austerely, rising from the rock and putting his pipe back under his cloak. He glanced at her one last time before starting to walk back inside the mountain.

"It's not what you think..." she whispered faintly, turning towards the wizard, who had stopped and was looking at her. "He only sent me, that's all."

Ghìda's soul firmly hoped it was so. There was no reason to lie to her, not for a battle so far away and outside their borders.

She hoped so.  
Gandalf noticed how, from cold as ice, the girl's eyes became deeply sad. He smiled kindly as he walked towards her, ready to say a few words of comfort.

"Gandalf, it pains me to interrupt you, but..." A dwarf from behind Gandalf interrupted the wizard’s words, instantly freezing to the spot when he saw the girl.

She knew the dwarf’s gaze towards her very well, and as if nothing had happened, she composed herself, her face turning into a block of ice.

"I must go now. My soldiers need me." she added, without showing the melancholy that triggered the single look of that dwarf with the long white beard. "Namaarie, Mithrandir."

With a brief nod Ghìda began to return to her camp, deeply disturbed by the wizard. She was no longer a child, he had no right, not after all those years. Not after all she'd been through.

Gandalf stared at her, sighing. The pain that girl felt, and her being so unique, had always made him sad. In 3,000 years, he had seldom held someone so dear to his heart.

"She's..."

"Yes Master Dwarf, she is Telkar’s daughter." Gandalf interrupted Balin before he could finish. The latter watched the bewildered and barred girl as she walked away from them as slowly as she had arrived.

"I thought it was just rumors... It's not possible."

"Many thought so, her existence has been long hidden by her father." he said austerely, turning to him and sighing, "After 120 years, he has brought her out of the Yellow Mountains. But her arrival here, at this moment, is making me think.” he said, lowering his voice. Balin moved his eyes away from the girl and then stared at Gandalf confused.

"What do you mean?"  
"I don't know yet Master Dwarf." said Gandalf, sighing one last glance towards Ghìda, who in the meantime in the distance helped to transport the wounded to the improvised tents, built shortly after the end of the battle, on the green field.

"And until I understand whats going on Thorin must not know about her. His past with the elves is not ideal." He ended up looking at Balin again and placed his hand on his shoulder bending down slightly. "I know Telkar will be here within two nights. If all goes as I hope, he will arrive before the alliance council." The sorcerer's gaze was serious as he nodded to Balin as he sighed.

"It is not easy to hide things from him, especially things like this, Gandalf. The lad, like his grandfather, does not like lies."

"I know, but you have to try. I don't know how he feels about elves, you have to avoid any kind of accident. Alliances are still too weak," he insisted, "His concerns will be many when he wakes up, let's not give him any more."  
Gandalf stared behind Balin's shoulder, and noticed how the group of dwarves of the company had stopped halfway between Thorin's tent and the hearth. They had probably been watching them since Ghída had left. The wizard sighed, looking away from them and casting a glance at Balin who, noticing the wizard's gaze beyond his shoulders, had already understood what had happened.

"I trust you Balin; not a word about the girl." he said seriously again and then pulled himself up.

"What if he finds out for himself?" Balin crossed his arms to his chest looking at Gandalf with an eyebrow raised, far from quiet.

"We just have to hope he takes it on the bright side."

~

Silence reigned for hours now in the valley below the Mountain. The pyres, which until a few hours before burned the darkness with their light, had become piles of ashes on the earth. No song was heard after the battle, no reception for the fallen.

The losses had been too great to even think of rejoicing in victory. During the funeral that evening, Ghída had learned that the two heirs to the throne were dead, their pyres rising in the middle of the valley. The two nephews of King Thorin. She did see their faces, too high were the pyres to let her see them, but she remembered Thorin's face.

Two deep blue eyes looking into the flames. The crown on his head. His sad song.

Never before had she seen a funeral of princes and never had she heard a voice so hoarse and inherent in pain. For those few minutes the whole valley had stood still. Even the wind hadn't blown, as if to hear the King Under the Mountain.  
She looked up at the starry sky above her as she surrendered to the water that was clutching her knees to her chest. The elves said that the Ainur had created the stars by singing. If Thorin Oakenshield would had been an Ainur that night he would probably have created a distant and faint one, pale as warm.

Sighing, Ghìda lay further back on the rock that was rising from the surface of the water of the lake. Many of her companions were also dead, many dwarves... many elves.  
Instinctively she looked towards her arms, brushing her hand on the row of runes on one of them. How many years had passed? Eighty? A hundred? She couldn't remember exactly. She just remembered her father's unholy look of anger and the sharp pain immediately after.

She slowly rewrote every single rune on her arm, caressing her skin, 'Baruk Khazâd. Khazâd ai-mênu'. These were the words as she continued to finish the outline in the water. She could imagine the harsh words her father would say to her if he saw her brooding over the past. The past for him was a boulder to destroy, the past was what had brought her to birth. His only child. His only heir. His bastard.  
If she'd been born a dwarf, would it have been different? If her mother had been a dwarf, would she be somewhere else now? Would she be at home, free, loved by her people? And if she had been born an elf, would she be lying on a white cloth praying to the moon, always eternal and beautiful? Singing melodies for the Valar, rejoicing at her being chosen from among the races?  
She often found herself praying in the night, in her bed, when no one could see her. She prayed to all the Valars: Manwë, Varda, Ulmo, Aule, she prayed to them all, someone had to hear her. Someone had to be the one who created her. Neither dwarf, nor elf. An impossible and cursed crossroad.

She shook her head sadly chasing away her thoughts by diving under the cold water, holding her head back. She came up immediately afterwards and took a big breath, pulling herself up out of the water. She quickly grabbed the white fur on the ground and wrapped it around her shoulders, and then pointed her eyes straight towards Erebor, which like a warning rose above her head, reminding her of the advice for the next day and how that advice, full of dwarves and elves, would be her proof.

~

"You don't have the authority or the blood to enter this hall half elf," Dain shouted as he stood up from his chair and watched her bow. Ghìda clutched her dress, staring Daín in the face and rising. She would not let him disgrace her in front of everyone.

"My father is one of the seven dwarf kings, in his absence I am his sole heir and I am taking his place , Dàin the son of Nàin," she hissed. Not a comment from where she had bowed before Thorin Oakenshield. She never even lowered her gaze from the red-haired dwarf, who furiously pushed his chair away from the table, and stood up.

"Just because you came out of his balls doesn't make you a dwarf! You're not!" he screamed furiously banging his hammer on the table. Screams of approval came from most of the dwarves in the room. For her, it was nothing but another slap. It was true, she wasn't a dwarf, and probably never would have been.

"Half-breed!"

"Dirty elf!"

"Valar’s curse!"

The screams grew louder and louder as she stood motionless, saying nothing, watching Dàin who, laden with those words, stepped forward. The scene was the same as the morning before, but in this case the screams were louder and the dwarves were many more.

"ATKÂT!" a roar overtook all the voices bringing silence into the hall.  
Thorin had exploded, rising from his chair. The whole room watched in fear. Bofur who in the meantime had stood next to him immediately backed away.

Ghìda looked at Thorin.

His features were hard and his icy eyes pierced her like a blade, blowing a beat. Never had she perceived such dismay, such foresight, not even from her father. This made her even more frightened, but she did not show it, staring the king straight in the eye.

All in the room waited with their hearts in their throats, nervous; Thorin's word had become the law, and he knew it well.

"Sit down," he said to her, pointing to the chair next to Daín. Even Daín did not dare contradict him, by sitting silently and placing his hands on the table.

Thorin stared intensely at him for a few seconds, waiting for a word too much from his cousin, that did not arrive. So, he sat down and briefly nodded his head to the guards in the back of the room to close the doors.

"I want my gems, Thorin Oakenshield." began Thranduil in the deepest silence of the room, moving his long, fixed neck towards Thorin. "It is the only thing I want and the only thing that made me sacrifice my soldiers under the stone of this mountain." Thorin looked at him for a moment and then looked down at the stone table.

Balin was hoping for his common sense. If he had refused them again, only the gods would know what might have happened.  
The king, continuing to look down, let out a long sigh. He crossed his fingers on the table, nodding his head and then looked at Thranduil.  
"You will have Lasgaren's gems." he said in a harsh voice and in such a clear tone that he did not even create doubt in Thranduil's soul. He bent his head slightly towards him as a sign of thanks.

"Agreement reached, then. I ask no more, King Under the Mountain," he said his last words in a tone so sickening that to Thorin's ears they seemed not a real title but a mockery.

"Do not play with my patience Thranduil!" he roared looking at him and laid his forearm on the table as he approached the Elf King. His tone had changed radically, from condescending to proud. He had become king, but he was still the same dwarf who had crossed fire and water to get his kingdom back. The dwarves followed him for this reason. "Not under this mountain," he added, piercing the eye of the elf who looked at his face with an indifferent air. Ghìda looked around and analysed the glances of all the dwarfs, as they looked at him. For them he was not only king because he was a son of Durin, he was king because all the dwarfs present esteemed him.

"Very well." Thranduil, tore his eyes from Thorin's face and cut -his words like a blade- the heavy silence that was created. "There is no reason for me to remain here, for what I wished for, I have obtained." he concluded as he stood up and then moved his cloak with one hand.

"I leave you to your affairs, King Under the Mountain." he repeated again, making Dwalin -on the outskirts of the room- pull his axe up from the ground, looking down on the Lord of the Forest.  
Ghìda stared at Thranduil as he settled in and took his first steps towards the exit, then looked away immediately.

"Cin are ú a orod plual ered sui hain."

She suddenly looked up again at Thranduil who had turned to her and said those words just a few steps from the stone door. He was looking at her, looking into her face, and then pausing for a split second, which seemed like an era to her, his eyes on her tattoos.

As she detached himself from that halo of coldness that had made her look like a block of stone in front of the entire chamber, she instinctively touched her left arm under the table.  
Moving his gaze away from her, Thranduil left the room, making a brief bow towards her again this time, a gesture that left all the dwarves in the room, including Thorin, bashful.

Slight whispers rose from the ranks of the dwarves, who meanwhile stared at her uninterruptedly, wondering what Thranduil had told her, so secret as to say it in Elvish. What they did not really know was that if he had said it in common language, all the dwarves present would most likely agree with her words.  
Thorin looked at her, passed her face, noticed how her change of expression when the elf spoke to her, as well as her change of posture. She lifted her gaze and directed it towards him, changing her face again into a block of ice with no emotions.  
He raised his eyebrows, breathing a long sigh and leaned back towards in his chair. Ghìda, on the other hand, did not take her hand off her tattoos. She did not show the heaviness that had enveloped her heart. She did not even pay attention for the minutes that followed, staring at an undefined point on the huge green marble table. His mind was beyond the hall, up into the mountains and woods, and down into the depths of the earth.

Bard, the spokesman for Dain and Esgaroth, had begun to speak, and had got up from his chair demanding that Thorin give him the part of the treasure he had been promised before the liberation of the mountain.  
Ori approached slowly towards Dwalin, who watched the meeting resting on the wall in the back of the room with his arms stretched out on the huge axe that was now resting on the ground.

"What did he say to her?" he whispered to him as he got closer and closer so as not to be overheard.

"I don't know, but I don't like her." he grunted quietly without moving his eyes away from Bard, who kept telling Thorin how he had killed the dragon and how he deserved the treasure of Erebor. "If that human doesn't stop praising the size of his cock, I'll smash my axe in his head" whispered Dwalin grunting.

"Why--why has Mr. Gandalf forbidden us to tell Thorin about her?" whispered Ori still near Dwalin's ear.

"I don't know and I don't care, she just has to get out of the way!" he tried to cut Dwalin short, but the young dwarf would not hear of it and came even closer now, almost resting his chin on his shoulder.  
"You know, if I look at it closely, it could look like a dwarf, but it doesn't have a beard, it has pointy ears, but it could, with a bit of a--"

Dwalin rolled his eyes and then turn to the Ori, perhaps tightening his axe so that his knuckles turn white.  
"No Ori! Shut up! You can't become a dwarf!" Dwalin countered with a low voice. "She'll never be a dwarf!" Bard had finished his speech and Thorin had given him a share of the treasure. Erebor, like Dale, had to be rebuilt and re-populated, Smaug's treasure served the people of the mountain now more than ever.

"But she's not even an elf..."

"That's enough!" he roared, though his voice, no matter how hard he tried, had grown even louder by turning a couple of dwarves in front of them. "Go now, the gorak has finished," he said, finally turning his head to the dwarf next to him.  
Bard approached the door and Dwalin opened it staring at him as he walked through it, without saying another word. Their treasure had become the favorite destination of all Middle-Earth. He wondered if sooner or later even Gondor's men would come to claim a part of it, just for the simple fact of existing under the same sky. Dwalin didn't have time to close the door until a deafening, metal noise made him lock it looking out. Dozens of dwarves in armor headed towards the door, dwarves with a symbol that Dwalin recognized, one of the seven families: the Blacklocks one.

The noise made Ghìda awaken from her thoughts, bringing her gaze on the dozens of dwarfs who entered through the door. They were led by a dwarf with long hair and a thick black beard, with a long scar on his eyes, dressed in ceremonial attire with a shimmering armor of dwarf metal, finished with inlays of gems of every shade of blue.

Ghìda sprang up and stared at the dwarf with his mouth half open while the haze of thoughts that had been created in his head left him speechless.

"Father..." she whispered to herself, stiffening herself and being able to feel her heart reach her throat, not even leaving her the strength to speak.

"King Thorin, son of Thràin, son of Thrór, King Under the Mountain," Telkar walked towards the table, bowing a long bow to Thorin, all too deep and solemn. The golden pendants woven into the Yellow Mountain lord's hair jingled as he pulled himself up from the deep bow.

Balin swallowed while observing the scene. Gandalf had spoken the truth therefore, he had arrived, a few hours late, but in the end it was wind at Erebor, even though his daughter was present to conduct the political negotiations.  
Balin only saw Telkar once before, still a young lord of the dwarves, when he visited Erebor before Smaug's attack. Respected by his people and feared by his enemies, he had already, in a few years of dominion over the Yellow Mountains, expanded the coastal mines of Elcar by leagues, bringing his kingdom to such wealth that even Thrór, who already owned the queen of gems, was envious of the stones coming out of his mines.  
For years after the conquest of Erebor there were only rumours from the east coast, rumours of ever increasing wealth and a marriage to an Elvish princess. But no one would ever even remotely expect that marriage to give anything more important than gold and gems to Telkar, a mockery to the elves and the gods. Balin clenched his jaw as Thorin watched the dwarf lord. If he hadn't known him well enough, he would have said that the bow he made with his head didn't hide anything, but he knew that he was studying the dwarf lord bowed before him.

"We were no longer expecting you Telkar, son of Tolkur." noted Thorin as he looked at him nodding his head slightly to greet the old dwarf. The latter giggled and signalled to one of his soldiers who took the long cloak he was wearing from behind.

"I had no intention of coming, young king, my will was in safe hands." his voice became more cloying, and he looked towards Ghìda. She knew that look, and foretold nothing good. Her father must have been hundreds of leagues from where she was. His mere presence in the room caused a weight on her stomach that wouldn't allow her to breathe.

"But women are fickle, so it is wiser to think for yourself about important business." he said, resting one hand on the table in front of her while the other hand moved a lock of hair behind her ear.  
At the mere touch she shuddered. Her father's touch was hard, not what she expected from a father, not a loving touch. A farce was being played out. She looked up at him as she felt his hand pull back from his face. The dwarves around her could not know, but she knew him too well. She had seen him use the same ways, the same flattery, at other times.

"I think it's time for you to go, daughter." A tone that didn't admit any replies came out of his lips. The true voice of her father, with her father's true eyes. The two black stains looked straight into her eyes and made her grit her teeth. She held his gaze silently for a few seconds and then nodded her head.

"Yes, Father," she replied, without taking her eyes off his, even though everyone in the room noticed her sudden change of tone. At first cold and firm, she had become pure stone, a chant that seemed to have recited thousands of times. She got up from her chair and stepped back, leaving room for her father to sit in her place.  
"Take her out." he ordered in a clear tone without even looking at her while she sat down. One of her father's soldiers approached her and took her arm. A slight moan of dismay came out of her lips to the feeling of tightness around her arm.

"I can leave on my own..." She shook the soldier's hand from her by pulling back his arm "...father." she replied by casting a real look at him, sitting in the place where she was before. The fury and shame mounted inside her belly. Her honour and her word would not be thrown away, just for a play.

She moved to the center of the hall and stared at the king of Erebor in the eyes, bending down almost touching the ground with her knee. "My king." shr revered and then looked up at him. They were looking at her as before, with eyes as clear but sharp as elven blades. Her chest froze again. The royalty emanating from Thorin Oakenshield was nothing she had ever felt before. He gave her a brief nod with his head and gave her permission to leave. She then turned her back and headed for the door, proceeding out the threshold. An eternal sigh came out of her lips and she let herself go with her back to the wall next to the door, while two statues of dwarf warriors, tall to the ceiling, looked at her as judges.  
"Females and daughters, difficult to handle!" Telkar laughed to himself, stretching towards the table, taking a mug of beer from the middle of it. From the single moment from which his daughter had left the room, the gentleman of the Yellow Mountains had changed his mood again.

"At what point had you gentle dwarf lords arrived?" he giggled as he looked at Thorin. "I hope I have arrived in time to discuss my requests for your help, Thorin Oakenshield."  
Thorin was in no mood to laugh over the situation, since the battle was over, he had heard nothing but requests, the leader of the Nerachiave had to hurry.

"Get to the point, what do you want from me?" His question made Telkar smile as he sneered slightly and lifted himself up from the table holding the mug of beer with one hand and taking a sip. "King of Erebor, I do not intend to deprive you of gold, land or whatever material possessions you have." Thorin watched him sneering as he took another sip of his beer and stood on the opposite side of the stone table. So now they could look at each other face to face. The old dwarf's eyes were pointed straight at his own.

He drank another sip from the mug and then placed it on the table as well as his hands. The shape of his face had changed again, he looked at Thorin with the eyes with which he first looked at his daughter, direct, without empathy, eyes of those who knew what he wanted.

"The thing I want is a union. I offer you my daughter's hand in return for my help, King Under the Mountain."

A'lâju Mahal= Mahal's curse  
Namaarie= Goodbye  
Baruk Khazâd. Khazâd ai-mênu= Axes of the Dwarves. The Dwarves are upon you.  
AtkÂt= Silence  
Cin are ú a orod plual ered sui hain= They will never accept you.  
Gorak= Idiot


	4. Duties

**King's Duties**

"They've been in there for hours!"

  
"Three hours to be exact, Dwalin, and I don't think they'll be coming out anytime soon," Glòin pointed out, cutting a piece of deer meat they had in the middle of the table. "A marriage is a serious business." He took a sip of beer from his mug and then wiping his mouth with his beard.

  
"How long does it take him to refuse?" he ran, looking Glòin dark in the face. "There's no reason why he should accept such a condition!"

  
"I like her," began Ori, sat at the top of the table as he was scribbling on his huge red tome. He had written down everything that happened in those months, from the beginning of their adventure, to the meeting with the elves, to the taking back of the mountain.

  
"For me, he will accept," Bofur's head came out from under the table.

He had been lying on the table bench ever since they had been driven out of the council chamber.

When Telkar had made his request to Thorin, there was such an uproar in the room, that no one could even understand if those directly involved in the conversation were still talking. Curses in all shades of Khuzdul came out from the mouths of all the dwarves in the room. Dàin became so enraged that he openly threatened the lord of the Blacklocks: he took it as yet another offense from one dwarf lord to another dwarf lord.

  
Thorin was left with no choice but to make everyone present leave, and continue the discussion with Telkar alone. Everyone was forbidden to enter the room until he was out and the bargaining was over.

The dwarves in the hall had all gone in different directions. The dwarves of the Yellow Mountains had returned to their camp at the edge of the mountain or were waiting near the exit of their lord. The Ironfoot soldiers, on the other hand, were sent back to perform their duties in Erebor, or to welcome, together with their lord, the growing number of dwarves returning to Lonely Mountain. Respecting Thorin's wishes, Dàin had not once tried to enter the hall, although anyone could easily notice his anger and frustration at not being able to attend the meeting.

  
Instead, the nine dwarves of the company had taken refuge in what was once the great hall of ceremonies and banquets.

A room of gigantic dimensions, with dozens and dozens of long tables carved from green stone. A huge fireplace, guarded by two lords of the dwarfs born from the marble in the background of the room. Bifur and Dwalin rekindled it, with no little difficulty, by lighting the golden friezes that went around the hall.

If those walls could have spoken, they would have told of songs, dances, glorious deeds of kings, and probably they would also have spoken of Dwalin, the master dwarf, who continued to darken his face more and more.

  
"Thorin has no heirs, brother, not any more at least," said Balin, who had stood aside staring into the fire in the fireplace, with his back to the dwarves' table.

He had been brooding for hours over Gandalf's words, and Telkar's proposal, trying to put the pieces back together, but just as the flames he was keep staring at, they escaped his understanding.

  
"So what?" Dwalin asked, staring at his brother's back and taking another sip from his mug, slamming it on the table. "Dàin has every right to claim the throne after Thorin's death. He too is a Durin."

  
"Would you follow him as king?" Balin had turned to look at Dwalin. "We all know what a valiant warrior he is, but he is all too impetuous, he would bring Erebor to be always on the warpath."

Dwalin sighed, shaking his head and not wanting to hear any reason, even though he had already seen in several different circumstances that his brother's words were true. Dàin was as brave as Thorin, but a thousand times more impetuous and if Thorin was undiplomatic, Dàin was even less so.

  
"That doesn't change the fact that he is not forced to marry her."

  
"And how many other dwarfs ladies do you know of royal lineage in husband age, Dwalin?" Bofur pointed out, pulling himself totally up from the stone bench and sitting up.

  
"Or dwarf ladies willing to marry, I would add, dear Bofur." added Dori who, massaging the little braids of his beard, had just sat down in the place that previously belonged to Dwalin who, still black in the face, had begun to walk up and down beside the table clutching the mug with his hand.

  
"The dwarf ladies linked to the royal families of the seven clans are few, and almost all of them married or too far from the bloodline to control their own clan," sighed Balin as he stopped looking at the flames in the chimney as he approached and sat next to Ori, who was not taking his eyes off from his words that he was writing on the pages of his book. "The Yellow Mountains and the coastal mines of Elcar are the largest gem deposits south of Illithien."

  
"She's not even a dwarf," Dwalin said, stopping his wandering around the room and watching Balin with resentment. "She's not, she's just a... something!" he roared and clenched his jaw. The dwarves were incredulous in the face of his frustration. "For all we know, she may not even be Telkar's heir. And fuck him and the gems of Elcar!"

  
The silence spread through the room while Balin remained silent, immersed in his questions and uncertainties.

Thorin had never thought of taking a wife, or had he ever given signs, after the taking of Erebor, of wanting someone at his side. He had married to the cause, lived to see the day when the mountain would be freed and the dwarf people back inside it.

He loved his people, he loved them so deeply that he was able to risk the lives of all the dwarves present... and not only. Balin shook his head and looked at his worn-out gloves.

Fili and Kili were like sons to Thorin; he had raised them as his own after the death of their father Vili, at the edge of the Wild, by a pack of ogres. The two brothers had never known him, or in Fili's case, they were too young to remember him, and they took Thorin as a father figure.

Everything was in his function, every new weapon they learned to handle, every new object they could forge, was in honour of their uncle. Thorin, on the other hand, tried all sorts of ways to give him back the affection that they were so looking for, but Balin knew that it was not the same. It would never be the same.

He remembered perfectly well how Dìs did not leave the house for days and did not speak to Thorin or his children for weeks when she discovered that her children would leave with his brother.

“Oh, Dìs” he thought as he continued to look down and shake hands with each other sadly.

  
"If he decides to take her as his wife, we should accept his decision," Bofur broke the heavy silence, who with two fingers fixed his long moustache. He noticed Dwalin with his arms crossed that he was studying an indefinite spot on the floor.

  
"An elf on the throne of Erebor, an elf as heir to the blood of our people?" Bifur became angry.

  
"An elf of royal descent," Bombur added, watching his cousin stop eating.

  
"A half elf, Bofur, a half elf, there's a difference my dear. Though her royalty makes her seem so, there's dwarf blood in her." tried to point out Dori, whilst his eyes were concerted in studying his brother's meticulous work.

"You know, once in the Blue Mountains, I met a dwarf..." he began to tell Glòin, bending down slightly on the table, looking at all the dwarfs, like he was telling them the beginning of a fairy tale, one often told children... "He was sitting next to me in one of Nogrod's taverns...".

"Then you were definitely so drunk that you were talking to your reflection while pissing."

  
"If you don't interrupt me, Dwalin, maybe I can finish!" He eyed him angrily, clearing his throat, whilst Dwalin rolled his bored eyes.

  
"So I was saying... ah yes! He was sitting next to me, a dwarf who said he was a merchant, trading from the Iron Mountains to the Yellow Mountains, and he told me he saw an Elvish lady walking around the cave town of Elcar, he said she was dressed as a dwarf but she was definitely an elf. He swore that one day, he even saw her shining like a star. The star of Durin called her. He said that she was always escorted, and that she didn't show her face. "

  
"Shine like a star? Please, that wouldn't even shine in the forges hall! She is a half elf, not a star, especially Durin's star."

  
"He's a half elf, so what?" he sighed up to the sky Bofur "Bilbo is a half ling, as hobbit he is, but there was no such fuss when he joined the company."

Bofur's tone was very serious, so serious that the dwarves present became slightly annoyed.

Dwalin approached Bofur with his finger pointing towards his face and stood in front of him with a fist on the table.

"Bilbo was a companion, a member of this company, a friend, to Thorin and all of us." He clenched his jaw "His duty was not to keep the continuity of the Durin lineage and he didn’t have to become our ruler!"

  
"Why do you hate elves so much?!" Bofur asked getting up from the bench and look at the angry dwarf in front of him.

  
"Why do you like them so much?!" Dwalin reacted as he approached Bofur dangerously, who in turn approached him impetuously. "They despise us, wish us nothing but misfortune and demand our obedience like those dogs, those humans!"

Something in Bofur broke in that moment and Dwalin perceived it from his gaze: dull and full of sadness and remorse.

The dwarf in the pointy hat was ready to speak out when a deaf noise interrupted his words in his mouth.

"To me she is very beautiful" Ori said, raising his eyes from his now closed book, looking at the two dwarves only a few inches away from each other. Dori looked at his brother and smiled veiled, in his naivety, probably had stopped something irremediable if carried on.

  
Bofur shrugged his shoulders and sighed heavily. "Forget it," he concluded by moving his hand and sitting back in his seat.

  
Dwalin on the other hand shook his head and looked towards the open arches in the back of the room. From there a string of stairs branched off, leading to the lower and upper floors of the building, and from there Dwalin could see the door to the council chamber, which remained well sealed.

  
Balin sighed as he got up from his chair and looked one by one at the dwarves in front of him. It was always his job to fix things, and their relationship was among them.

"If Thorin decides to marry her, I expect from all of you a little tact towards the girl, I think even she will not jump from joy at the idea of an arranged marriage."

  
"An arranged marriage that will make her Queen of dwarves!"

  
"A marriage that will make her Queen of dwarves and you, Dwalin." Balin pointed out again, before taking a long sigh and looking towards the back of his brother at the table.

"Thorin will know the decision to make brother."

  
The dwarf nodded and sighed as he turned to sit back down at the table when a noise made his back hair stand up. The sound of a door opening.

  
All the dwarves in the room followed the same path that Dwalin's gaze made, up the stairs in front of the arches.

Telkar had stepped out making all the dwarves of his clan stand upright near the door, whilst Thorin stood beside him. The older dwarf gave a long bow to Thorin before turning his back to him and continuing on to the stairs that would lead him out of the mountain.

Dwalin looked for Thorin's gaze as he stared at Telkar's back and then turned to his companions looking at them for an instant. Thorin moved his head slightly, and then turned and climbed the stairs that would take him to the royal rooms.

  
"He will marry her."

The hours had passed slowly and agonizingly, every minute seemed an era as Ghìda waited for her father's return from the council chamber.

Immediately after being thrown out of the room she returned to the camp without stopping: the frustration she felt and the shame that covered her did not want to disappear.

She still felt Thorin's eyes on her, cold and authoritarian, the eyes of the King Under the Mountain studying her from the first moment she entered that room. She would have been willing to receive that look from anyone but him, the Dwarf King.

  
The last braid melted in her hair, but her hands trembled so hard that she could not undo the last golden pendant stuck in her hair.

"Damn it!" she whispered in frustration and plunged her face into her hands, resting her elbows on the small table where she was placing all the pendants that had been in her hair until recently.

Throughout the afternoon she had dragged herself inside it far and wide. Her father had brought with him another large part of the Yellow Mountains army, showing off his wealth, that made him feel good. Just as he had done with her in the council chamber: she had noticed how while he had moved the lock of her hair he had looked around. He wanted everyone to look at her, because even though everyone despised her, she was still his. He had succeeded in something that no one had ever succeeded in. To have her.

In every way she had tried to prove to him that she was worth more than being a dwarf, as everyone would have wanted, but every time his gaze reminded him that she was not a dwarf, she was his jewel on the crown.

His mizim.

By whatever means she had tried not to stare at the mountain, she had helped to sharpen the blades of his swords, to send messages to the families of the fallen, to collect supplies, but nothing, the more she tried, the more her gaze fell on the grey rock, on its destroyed parapet, on its stone doors.

In the end, she took refuge in her tent, where she could not see her, but the anguish gripped her heart. She felt there was something deeply wrong, it was a feeling she had been carrying since the doors of the room had closed behind her, getting worse every minute.

  
She ran her hand through her hair and pulled herself up from the dark table, tired of being of those thoughts that had been in her mind for several hours. She took a turn on herself and with a disarmingly slow pace, almost like a weight too heavy to carry, she took off her long green dress and dropped it on the floor. She moved her head in a circle, stretching herself, trying to ease the tension, and carrying her hand behind her neck, where a bulge made her take it off so quickly that it seemed as if she had touched a sword in a forge. As if he could still feel the pain of when, instead of a long white stripe, it was a long red liquid ribbon.

She took a breath and slowly passed her other hand around her side, touching the end with the tip of her fingers and instantly regretted it by pulling the hand away quickly, leaving a bitter breath, crossing her twisted lips in a grimace of pain. Pain that could have passed, but that in her mind and body were still present.

She closed his eyes by inhaling and quickly put on the long white petticoat he used to sleep, covering herself, no longer touching or seeing the long scar behind her back.

"My lady," a voice called out to her, and she suddenly looked up at the sheet of her tent, which had been pulled slightly by a soldier on guard who had barely looked out.

"Your father wishes to speak with you."

  
Her back was raised and the knot in her throat became more overbearing.

He was back then.

She nodded slightly as words failed her, clutching the light white hair under her hands.

  
"T-tell him I'm coming" she told the guard by rolling the white fur around her shoulders. He nodded and closed the curtain behind him.

  
Her head told her to start walking, but a force more internal to her, starting from her belly, was blocking her legs. She took her first steps towards the exit of the tent, one heavier than the other, even her arm seemed to lack strength as she moved her hands to get out of the red drapes of the tent.

The cold air hit her full face, darkness enveloped her, the night was only illuminated by a faint moon above her head and the light of the central tent of the camp, that of her father.

The force that pressed her back inside her chest grew stronger and stronger, she had to fight with herself several times not to return to her tent, but she could not, not with him.

The two guards stared at her attentively as she took her last steps towards the entrance, a grip on her stomach took them as they moved the tent to let her through. What was happening to her? That horrible feeling of vomiting was not normal, her heart beating like that was not normal and it only got worst as she passed through the doorway.

Her father was bent over the table in the middle of the makeshift room. He had taken the excessive gold pendants out of his hair and his ceremonial armor was thrown into a corner. A gust of air moved his hair behind the back of his head slightly, the curtains had been closed, leaving her alone with him.

She bent her neck slightly forward without taking her eyes off him. She was ready, or so she thought, for whatever reason of her nightly invitation.

  
"Adad." At that moment, he noticed her and raised his eyes from the maps, smiling at her, a smile that seemed to her, of pure joy, which she had rarely seen on her father's face.

  
"My daughter, I have great news, news that would cheer up even the saddest of dwarves," He moved towards her with his arms wide.

  
"I gather that your dealings with King Thorin have cheered you up," she replied, keeping control of herself stressfully, but her hands, if noticed, would have betrayed her: soaked in the fabric of her petticoat they tightened and pulled the fabric, venting the pressure she felt in her chest.

  
"Rejoiced is an understatement, my child!" With the ever-greater smile he approached her and as if he had noticed them, he took one of his hands slightly closer to her. He quietly held her gaze, her expressionless face in stark contrast to that of the dwarf. "And I hope the news will cheer you up too."

  
"If it benefits our clan, I will be cheered," he replied, keeping the tone flat.

  
"Oh greatly my dear, it will bring lustre, wealth, power, and endless advantages." His face trembled slightly, as if something had pierced him, transforming his smiling mouth to the grimace like a smile with which he had presented himself in the room opposite Thorin Oakenshield.

  
"What did he give you?" She stood motionless on the spot watching his father's every move.

  
His sneer grew wider and wider as he began to circle her like a hunter with prey. The look he had given her froze the blood in her veins.

"He didn't give me anything. I did."

Interrupting the circle around her, he looked at her face and with a bewildered slowness approached her cheek and caressed it slowly. The simple touch made her bite the inside of her cheek, giving her strength not to stray from his touch.

"I offered him your hand, little Mizim."

  
Her eyes opened wide, bringing the whole impenetrable castle she had built around her to crumble. Her mouth opened as soon as she backed away from her father's fingers. That simple statement had pierced her sternum, leaving her without the strength to speak or even breathe.

"W-what have you done?" she could only say as she stood with his eyes wide open, still receding the most from the dwarf in front of her, who laughed slowly as she almost touched the curtain sheet with her back.

  
He shook his head amused and approached the table taking a mug and filling it with the pitcher of beer next to it. "You will join Thorin son of Thrain in marriage. You need know no more." He chuckled shaking his head, sipping from his cup. "He has a bad temper, I must say, worse than his father's, but now he's a king. A king with a dominion falling to pieces and no heirs." he confirmed, ignoring her glare. The truth that she had longed for all day had become clear to her, the real reason why she was there, and not there in her tent, there in Erebor.

  
As a reward, as a body, as an object of exchange.

She had hoped with all her heart, from the moment she left, that this time, it would be different, that this time she would understand, that he would bend to that minimum of love that she was still trying to see him, but no. She was just his little gem. And as such he had exhibited her in front of all the dwarves, deluding her that after all those years he had finally believed her as his heir.

Her eyes pinched her while her indifferent father sipped from his cup while still not looking at her.

  
He seemed amused by her melancholy, so much so that he placed his cup and approached her again, giggling softly, with his hands behind his back. "Oh my child, did you really think I sent you to the other side of Middle-Earth for a single battle, when I could have sent any other dwarf to command men when the battle was over?"

It didn't take her long to connect the dots, and when she did, she barred her eyes.

  
"How long had you had the crow from the mountain before you sent me here?"

  
He shrugged his shoulders. "I let several hours pass before I gave it to you."

  
"A few hours where hundreds of our people could have died," She looked at him in awe. He knew. He knew that there was an egg king under the mountain, that the elves would kill them all if they didn't deliver the treasures of the mountain. "Where the king's nephews died, the heirs to the throne, father, and hundreds of dwarves, men and elves."

  
Her father raised an eyebrow by placing the cup on the table and sighing, as if the conversation was of little importance to him, but for Ghìda it counted. It was their honour that was being questioned.

"If I had wanted to answer the crows' messages right away, I certainly would not have sent you. You're a woman Ghida. The war is none of your business. Just because that foolish sorcerer taught you to use a sword doesn't make you a dwarf, or a warrior. The only thing you serve is to bring heirs into the world."

Hearing those words spoken by him, so clear and vivid, triggered something, the same spring that had coursed through her inside the council chamber. The tears stopped pressing on her eyelid as she looked up at her father's amused ones, full of disappointment, but also something deeper. Full of rage, a violent and indomitable anger.

  
"I won't marry him, Father," She looked at him dark in the face, his face contrite and his fists clenched tight at his hips. She didn't know how she managed to get those words out, only that a big hand grabbed her chin violently, squeezing it tightly. The sudden pain made her eyebrows ache and groan as her heart began to beat more and more violently. Her father's eyes were inches away from hers. It had triggered it, anger and darkness were inherent in it.

  
"Oh yes you will..." A poisonous tone came out of his lips as he tightened her jaw even more strongly, this time a guttural groan resounded through the room. She closed his eyes with fear trying to move her face but a third tug made her open them again, watching whilst two embers full of hate were fixed on her face. "You will lie with all the dwarves of Erebor if I command you to..."

He was clenching his fists breathing fast trying to control the tears as he squeezed her face tighter.

"Do you remember what happened the last time you disobeyed me Ghìda?" His free hand slowly went around her pelvis and touched her back.

At that point she couldn't take it anymore: her eyes became wet and a single tear, so repressed, fell on her cheek. She began to count the seconds: one, two, three, four. She counted them to ignore all the images that came back to her mind, the darkness, the cold, the slow passage of time in her closed room for days.

  
"They will never accept me," she said with her trembling voice trying to regain control of herself. She would not give him the pleasure of seeing her desperate to beg him. No. "They hate me. His people hate me."

A sneer stretched out over his father's face. He slowly took off her back and loosened the grip on her face.

  
"Yes, they will," he whispered next to her face, letting her go slowly. "They will do it because you will be Queen of all dwarves, mother of Durin's children."

He took her slowly by the shoulders, leading her to one side of the room, where a huge mirror with gems and runes set in the frame was placed on the floor. He put her in front, forcing her to look at herself in the mirror whilst holding her shoulders. Her cheeks were red, and her dark eyes swollen from the tears she had shed. Light red fingerprints went from ear to ear. Her disgust went up. She didn't have to be like that. She didn't want to look at herself like that. Her father held her close by her shoulders, looking at her face beyond the mirror, smiling at her and brushing her cheek with his thumb.

  
"Imagine the crown upon your head," he whispered to her near her ear. "The mountain as your home, the bows at your passage, the loving looks of your people. Elcar and Erebor united by an indissoluble alliance and a queen on the richest throne in Middle-Earth." Father's tone had changed, lighter, more delicate.

For a split second, he was able to make her imagine her reflection as he had described it. Pendants in her hair, a crown, sitting on the throne of Erebor, whilst, with Thorin beside her, the people of Erebor acclaiming her, recognizing her as Queen, as a dwarf. Was she really willing to throw her life away for this; on being a wife, on being a dwarf just because she was the King's wife? She looked down, wanting no more to imagine herself. It was wrong, it was all wrong. 

"A Queen Under the Mountain, with Arkenstone upon your throne." He whispered the last words close to her ear. "Everything you ever wanted within reach of your hand. You'll just have to be splendid, smiling and obedient and complacent."

He spun her around, allowing her to look at her face and sighing lightly, letting her go.

  
Her father's hands descended towards hers holding them gently.

  
"Do you want to make me proud? Marry Thorin Oakenshield, and become Queen."

  
The fear she felt until seconds before slowly faded as he gave her a sweet look. She knew she was acting, she always did, but this time she was right, what other chance did she have? She stood on her head and back looking her father right in the eye. There was little to decide, and the choice for Gida was non-existent.

  
"When?"

  
The fresh air of the night, ran on him over as soon as he stepped outside, his dark hair moved slightly, while his blue shirt was on his chest, moved by the wind. The clear sky and high moon made it possible to see everything perfectly, allowing him to reach the balustrade in rubble.

He laid his forearms on it, holding his wounded shoulder with one hand, inhaling the air of the night with full lungs before he tiredly passed his hand over his face. He drew in a deep sigh, trying to erase, in any way he could, the pain that weighed down his chest and that did not leave him alone even for a second.

For hours he had tried to fall asleep, but the nightmares, like every night, would not leave him alone, faces, flames, Erebor in rubble, but that night the battle of a few days before also appeared to him... And his sister's face, crying desperately over the bodies of Fili and Kili, lying on the ground in two pools of blood, screaming at him among the sobs, reproaching him as if it was all his fault, how he had done that, how he had killed them.

  
He needed to breathe, to clear his thoughts, to forget as much as possible.

  
The walls of his room seemed to be getting smaller and smaller, so he walked to the terrace above the Kings' Halls, where a few days earlier he watched Pontelagolungo go up in flames, and the pyres of his nephews go up in flames.

His gaze moved irrationally towards the centre of the valley, where the night before flames and tears had mixed with the pyres of the fallen, where the sobs in the distance resounded in the setting sun.

Irrationally, he turned his gaze where on a heap of red curtains under the mountain walls. Many candles were lit in them but his gaze was only on one, a little bigger than the others but far from all.

Throughout the whole meeting his gaze was gravitated towards her, he couldn't explain why but there was something that led him to look at every single inch of her face.

It wasn't because of her pointy ears, her dwarfish posture, as well as the shape of her body, too small for her race. It was something else, it was her gaze, cold as snow, which had melted as soon as the Lord of the Elves had spoken to her.

Few times he was struck by something, something so absolutely normal as a male, but the look she gave him before he left the room made his knees tremble. Few had ever looked at him like that in his life, only his companions.

A look full of loyalty.

His father, on the other hand, did not have the same honour in his daughter's eyes, and when he proposed marriage to him, he did so with such pride that he had to resist the unstoppable impulse to drive him out of the mountain. But the wisdom and calm that now imposed his role on him had made him milder, but in order to speak confidently with the lord of Elcar he had had to drive everyone present out.

  
"I knew I'd find you here, lad."

  
"Have I become so predictable, Balin?" he replied gloomy without tiring his eyes from the valley below serene that Balin had reached him and not his cousin. He did not have the temperament to argue at the time, and discussions with Balin were very rare.

  
"I still remember when a little prince of dwarves used to climb up here, escaping from my lessons to look beyond the confines of Lonely Mountain. The old dwarf approached him with his hands in his big red tunic, his gaze was bright, far away lost in the horizon.

  
Thorin smiled among himself and if sadly, remembering the years when he was nothing but a child who enjoyed being a soldier. "I wasn't easy to handle, was I?"

  
Balin slightly shaked his head. "No, and over the years you haven't changed at all, lad. As stubborn as the few dwarves that inhabit this mountain. If you didn't want to do something, there was no chance of changing your mind."

  
The veiled commentary on him made Thorin giggle subtly, making him twitch his shoulder.

  
He squeezed his left eye as he pulled his shirt shoulder down with a tug to check the bandage, but as soon as he looked down a light caught his attention as far as it was fixed until just before Balin's arrival.

But it wasn't the tent he hoped for, it was just a change of the guard of two dwarves of Telkar's guards.

A pinch of disappointment lay on his chest, even he could not explain why he wanted to see the light of the half- elf's tent on, perhaps to be sure that what had happened on that damn day was real.

Balin looked at him from below and pointed his gaze where Thorin was staring, towards the camp of the Blacklock clan, more precisely pointed on an isolated tent. At that moment he understood what was afflicting the King and in reality it was what was afflicting every dwarf inside the mountain and also outside it.

  
"I know what you want to ask me."

  
"Why it is the King's business? We will support your decision, all of us." He asserted the last sentence by narrowing his gaze and then moving it to the profile of Thorin who was still lingering in the night in front of him.

  
"You don't have to explain."

  
Thorin shook his head and looked into the still dark curtain.

  
Yes, he owed him.

  
"The Yellow Mountains will give us their support: weapons, soldiers, and resources. We will open a trade channel from here to the south of Illithien, our gold for their gems. His daughter's hand, for a union between the two richest and most powerful dwarf clans." He let himself go gloomy by avoiding Balin's gaze, which became more serious at those words.

"And an heir to keep this alliance is our only survival, the future King of Erebor, so he will also... also be the lord of Elcar." He sighed and shook his head as he narrowed his eyes.

"It is a political marriage. I am the king...I must..." He whispered the last word to himself and but Balin noticed his look, even if he tried to hide it from him. Gloomy and almost sad, but Thorin would never admit it. Not even to himself.

  
Balin came so close to him that Thorin could feel their arms touching each other. "To marry for love was never an attainable privilege for the Kings of this mountain."

  
He shook his head at Balin, continuing to avoid his gaze.

"Not that it was my wish." he told him and told himself, but in reality it was a lie that had been repeating itself for years now: he longed for it strongly, when he was still young, he really wanted it, but in time his heart was hardened and similar dreams were lost. 

He clenched his fists slightly, everything was happening because of him, only him.

  
The old dwarf next to him shook his resigned head moving his gaze beyond the horizon and a heavy breath came out of his lips; the change of attitude touched him

  
"Why are you looking at me like that, you've never been married either."

  
"Not that it was my wish," echoed Balin as he looked at him again, this time full of bitterness.

  
Balin lowered his gaze to the old gloves and took them off, a gesture that made him even more bitter.

  
"I had to get married once. She didn't want me." he smiled sadly and looked up at him again.

  
"It happened long before you were born, if your father was here he'd probably tell you laughing, but I was devastated, you know, boy? She was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in Middle-Earth. I decided never to get married to anyone, except her. Alas, I'm here with you now, and I'm too old for this." He smiled sadly.

  
Thorin almost widened his eyes. He thought he knew everything about Balin He had been like a father to him! He didn't believe that such a thing could be hidden from him. He was shocked to think of this side of the white-bearded dwarf.

  
"Why are you telling me this now?"

  
"Because an happy marriage is a gift for few, and I just hope you will have one lad."

* * *

_**Adad** =Father  
 **Mizim** =Jewel_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here I am with another chapter, this time a little longer and hopefully a little more intriguing than the previous two. I hope we have begun to understand a little bit the situations, the various relationships and the various ideas of everyone about what is going to happen. The relationship between Ghìda and her father is ambiguous and abusive, a lot actually, I tried to make the best of a relationship between a manipulator and an easily manipulable character, and I must say that my ideas for this relationship were much more extreme, but in the end, to have even a more intriguing arc, I kept the relationship "lighter" than what was actually in my head.  
> A huge thank you to alle the people who is following the story, who left kudos and subscribed, i hope i wont let you all down, , you can't imagine what joy you gave me, knowing that someone appreciates my story is very important to me. Thank you :) Leave a review if you are enjoying this and letme know what youa all ar thinking <3 
> 
> SPOILER (In the next chapter we will finally see the meeting between Thorin and Ghìda, expectations? How will they behave in your opinion? Let me know!)


	5. Home

**HOME**

With caution Ghìda closed the little golden ring on her earlobe, looking at herself in the mirror to be more careful but her reflection showed her more than she wanted to see. Everything that she kept hidden.

The redness around her eyes emphasized perfectly that she had slept poorly, and her pallor, that in the little rest she could have had she had not had quiet dreams. The night was not the quietest: after coming out of her father's tent during, she ran straight into hers, lying down in bed and letting go of the tide of emotions she had kept inside throughout the day before.

To disguise the situation, she had tried to fix her long brown hair, leaving it loose, with only two fine braids from the back of her neck falling on her shoulders, invisible, if it hadn't been for the small rings at every turn.

She had always been accustomed to pomp, exaggeration, gold, jewels, even wearing them if she had to, but she had not yet got used to why she had to do it that day.

If it had been up to her that morning she would have already been on a steed heading home, with her hair blowing in the wind, the air on her face that made her nose curl and her heart beating, free of all thoughts, all obligations, all honour.

Forever free, forever strong.

No one would ever make her worry, angry... suffer again.

But nothing depended on her anymore.

There was something more important at stake than a marriage, something that was far more important to her than a marriage.

She shook her head and let those thoughts out, but it wasn't easy; instead, the face of Thorin Oakenshield, the face that had been stirring her thoughts all night long, replaced them. That day she should have to see him again, in a less unofficial but no less important way. Her father had made a request for a meeting between the two of them the day before directly to Thorin, while that morning he had come to inform her about the behaviour she should have kept in the king's presence: what to say, how to move, whether to look him in the eye or not. Everything had to be perfect.

  
He even took the trouble to tell her how to walk: _"With kingship Ghìda, remember that you will be queen, my Mizim.”_

  
She could still hear the sickening tone with which he had told her, the poison in his words, and the threat within them: if something went wrong, he wanted her to be sure that wherever she went he would find her. He always did.

She sighed deeply, and with her hands on the table, she got up; in any case it was too late to run away now.

She watched the exit of the tent, resting her hands on the long cloth for seconds that seemed endless to her, taking a long breath she went out. What she saw made her stay still with her mouth wide open.

From her tent, at the bottom of the camp, she could see almost the whole of the enormous valley between Lonely Mountain and Dale, and there hundreds of dwarves had come during the night, with ponies and caravans. Entire families marched towards the entrance to Erebor.

Never she had ever seen such a thing, small tents had been set up all over the gorge: the knights of the Iron Hills, as well as those of the Yellow Mountains, had organized small groups ordered approximately every tenth of a mile, from the beginning of the road that started from Dale and went all the way to the entrance of the dwarfs' gate.

Directed by other guards, the groups of dwarves who arrived were accompanied. From the movements of their arms and the single words in Khuzdul, often unconnected to her ear, she could roughly understand that they would escort them to the palace city to find shelter.

  
The people who had found their home, who had regained their freedom but still had to come to terms with reality: Erebor was in ruins. A hundred years it had been uninhabited and the clash a few days earlier had damaged a large part of it. When she had entered the palace the day before, she had immediately realized the gravity in which it poured; Smaug had almost burnt it to the ground and even in those few meters she had walked in the palace, she had noticed that dust and rubble covered almost entirely the floor.

  
In those conditions, if not worse, also the city of Dale, she understood very well the reason for the request of the chief of the men towards Thorin. She had watched for a long time the city at the top of the hill, black from the ashes and in ruins when it arrived, and even more so the next day.

She looked out from the groups of dwarves towards it again, and smiled at herself noticing how even the men had not left time to rest, and with ropes and scaffolding, were repairing the houses that had been destroyed.

As she looked down the hillside, she noticed something she had not noticed before: the soldiers of the Iron Hills had created structures that flanked the entire side of the mountain opposite that of his camp, starting from the walls of Dale and continuing along the stone road to Erebor. Forges and small yards had been set up underneath them with carpenters, tinsmiths and blacksmiths who worked tirelessly. A dwarf's way in and out of the mountain: rubble and wood were moved from the inside to the outside and vice versa. The soldiers had returned to what they were, industrious dwarves, their pride far outweighing their weariness or their honour. That, she knew well: they would die of breathlessness rather than keep Erebor in that state.

  
But what state, really?

  
Disappointed she thought how her eyes had never rested on the Lonely Mountain before a few days ago, but she had heard the songs in the Yellow Mountains, songs of a kingdom beyond imagination, carved into the rock of a mountain, emerald green walls and golden veins that flowed even on the immense staircases, which like trees in a forest, branched all over the city.

She looked up like the night before towards one of the two giants as guardians of the door and taking a last deep breath nervously tightened the edges of the long red dress and, paying attention to the still present small slabs of ice, began to walk towards the mountain.

However, her path was blocked almost immediately by two soldiers from Elcar, who were advancing towards her at a determined pace. They were the two guards who had stopped the night before in front of their father's tent, young, very young, if they hadn't both had long dark beards, he would have mistaken them for little boys.

They stopped in front of her and leaned forward as a greeting.

  
"My lady, your father asked us to escort you inside the mountain," one of them said as he was holding the axe on his belt.

  
Raising a confused eyebrow, she shook her head. "There's no need, it's only a few meters, I can go alone."

  
"He insisted." he insisted, not taking his eyes off the ground.

  
"I can very well make my own way without any trouble."

  
"My lady," interrupted the soldier on the right with humility and finally raised his eyes to hers, begging. "Please."

  
The change of tone of the boy in front of her confused her, but looking over her shoulder she understood the reason, and shared her mood.

A figure, in the distance, was watching the discussion; standing in front of the main camp tent behind the two guards' backs, her father stared at the discussion with his hands behind his back. The long black beard was no longer decorated with the rich gems of their people, it was roughly bound. The ceremonial robes that adored him until the day before had disappeared, in their place, work clothes, which even if decorated with small embroideries and dark furs, made his being first of all a dwarf and then a politician shine through.

The still hesitant eyes of the two guards were still pointed at her while they tightened their jaws, so as not to let a plea slip probably.

For a moment she hesitated. She didn't want to be treated like a humble court lady, but on the other hand, she didn't have the heart to let her pride weigh on someone else's head.

  
"Very well then, lead the way." she agreed, and the two heartened young soldiers sighed with a sigh of relief and, straightening their backs, began to march in front of her, opening the way among the soldiers, focused on their work.

  
They walked beyond the camp, towards the entrance of the mountain, and one detail left her astonished: the continuous glances thrown by the soldiers and not, towards her. Indifferently, she tried to ignore them, knowing perfectly what they were due to. Many of them, probably, had already received the news, she was also ready to hear threats, but none of them reached her ear.

To her utter embarrassment, she realized, looking around, that for the first time, not everyone was looking at her with contempt. Reluctantly, yes, but not with contempt.

From her fellow citizens she was accustomed to receiving some glances of superiority but always silent, but from the remaining dwarves in the valley she would never have expected such an attitude.

The same dwarves of the Iron Hills who spat the day before on the ground on which she passed, were now silent, and in her walking along the avenue, no one, unlike two days before, had stood between her and the entrance to the mountain.

The dwarves carrying materials continued on their way, giving her only fleeting glances, while the craftsmen and blacksmiths in the improvised forges stopped for a few moments, watching her as she passed by.

But the thing that disconcerted her the most was Dàin Ironfoot, at work at one of the forges. He didn't even look up at her, the rhythmic beats of his hammer on the anvil filled the air, but not a sound came out of his mouth. And she, who had prepared herself for yet another confrontation, was astonished at his attitude: something had changed, something she could not fully understand.

Ghìda could not know it, but a tacit agreement had been made that morning among all the dwarves of Erebor and beyond, an agreement that put honor and trust in their king before their personal sympathies. No one would have given her insults, or if they had wanted to, they would have done so in their head, as Dain was doing at the time, as he struck the iron on the anvil. If it was the will of Thorin son of Thròr to marry the filthy half-blood, then he would not have spoken, but he would have been the first to speak if the half elf had sullied the name of the Durin lineage.

Ghìda crossed the small debris bridge towards the entrance to the domain below the mountain. But as soon as she crossed the threshold and set foot in Durin's domain, she felt the enormous weight on his shoulders. The huge rock faces made her feel incredibly small, and incredibly miserable in a world much bigger than she was. The calm that had lurked in her heart for a few seconds had made way for a deep anguish, she felt as if the mountain was speaking to her, watching her as a judge. Every stone, every wall, every splinter emanated strength, a strength as ancient as Middle Earth itself.

She had to stop for a few seconds under the arches. Her heart was beating wildly and her breath had become heavier. She hadn't had that feeling in her chest the day before when she entered Erebor, but neither had she when she left it, and her confusion increased when she noticed that only she seemed to be hit by the mountain.

The two young dwarves in front of her had continued to walk at a fast pace, as did the dwarves around her, who kept going in and out of the mountain, or performing their tasks without the slightest effort.

As soon as she took one step to reach them and crossed the threshold, all that feeling disappeared, the heartbeat had suddenly stopped.

  
"You can stop here, I'll escort your lady. If you don't mind."

  
During that confusion she had not noticed, that the two guards had been stopped by an old dwarf with a thick white beard divided in half. She had already seen him, she was sure she had already seen him. With a brief nod of the head the two guards went away coming back out of the mountain, leaving her in the middle of the corridor with the old dwarf who approached her one step closer and spread his arms, giving her a deep bow.

  
"Balin, son of Fundin, my lady, at your service." He revered her with a friendly smile. "It pains me to admit that I am the King's advisor, and even more so that I am his cousin."

  
In response, she bent her head forwards whilst keeping her hands on the fabric of the dress. A feeling of relief stretched to her chest, knowing that her father's men were no longer there.

  
"Ghìda, daughter of Telkar, to yours."

  
"I know, my lady." He stopped her with a miserable attempt to break the ice and put her at ease, to skip the formalities, but she reacted in the opposite way.

  
Ghìda in fact straightened up with her back biting her lip. Of course he knew who she was, everyone knew.

Her cheeks turned slightly red with embarrassment, as if she had said something wrong at the wrong time.

  
Balin tried again.

  
"Not that it's bad, my lady." The old dwarf smiled at her again cordially, but she could not bring down the air of seriousness that emanated. She looked like a fool, she knew it, but she had never behaved differently, never let go, especially with other dwarves.

That's why she felt terribly guilty when the dwarf spread his arms and stood beside him pointing out a long corridor carved in the rock with always an extremely kind face. "Please follow me."

  
She followed the steps of the old dwarf, who quickly escorted her through the enormous spaces of the mountain. The green marble surrounded her, they passed in front of dozens of stairs, which went up and down, without taking even one, going straight on. She had the chance to look around. Houses were carved into the rock, small windows were already lit, and figures that appeared and disappeared in the intricate system of stairs. With courage, she made herself strong and looked underneath her, repenting instantly but being stunned by it, so much so that her jaw dropped.

Hundreds of meters of emptiness stretched beneath them, emptiness interrupted only by long platforms and balconies rising from the side of the mountain; the last corridor was so remote in the depths of the earth that it was difficult even to notice. Balin noticed his astonishment and stopped to look down too.

  
"It's a sight I must admit, it still amazes me."

  
Blinked several times, still shocked Ghìda nodded, pulling back slightly from the edge and continuing to look down.

"It takes your breath away, that's all there is to it." She whispered and looked towards her guide, who had nodded and started walking with his hands behind his back.

His attitude had changed, because of her, as she had just entered.

She would have liked to add something, a kind word, a thank you, but her character had made a bad joke again. She opened her mouth to speak, but immediately closed it, continuing to stare at the dwarf's back. He'd been so friendly with her, damn it.

  
"Master Dwarf!" she called after him, attracting his attention and stopping his walking, "I am sorry for my behavior just now. I was unkind, forgive me." She apologized by looking down to hide his slightly embarrassed face.

  
Balin on the other hand smiled kindly again as he shook his head.

"There's nothing to apologise for, I understand your position."

"If only he really understood," she thought to herself.

"And you mustn't frown for so little."

  
When she heard those words, she felt heartened. She, who had remained composed and orderly until that moment, faced with the cordiality shown to her, could not hold back a smile as her nerves relaxed. Something told her that she could trust that dwarf, that he was the first, that he was not her subordinate, that he showed her such kindness given so long.

She sped up to walk beside the dwarf, picking up her skirt.

"Actually, there was no reason not to let your guards in, or your father's guards." he confessed to her as he kept walking, slowing his pace to keep them at the same distance. "You seemed so uncomfortable, I thought, in a situation like this, leaving in a good mood would be the wiser choice."

  
Ghìda lowered her guilty gaze and bit her inner cheek and nodded. "Thank you, Master Dwarf, you have a keen eye."

  
Balin smiled at his embarrassed face. "Years of practice, my lady."

He told her what the years of practice were really like, especially with his brother. Rarely did both he and Thorin express what he wanted to express by their voice, their feelings, or even simple needs, so over time he had learned to do without words and had begun to interpret their signals. It didn't take him long to detect the girl's discomfort; she often tightened her dress even though there was no need for it, and her tone changed radically when someone from her clan was next to her or could listen to her.

They turned elbow to elbow starting up the long staircase that would take them over the Kings' Halls, into the throne room. Balin had lengthened the turn a lot, it was only two flights of stairs from the entrance, but Balin could not hide the curiosity he felt towards that strange girl. He wanted to speak to her, he wanted to understand what had led Thorin to stare at her tent in the middle of the night.

  
"Have you been with King Thorin long?" Ghìda blurted out. Balin slowed down even more as he climbed the great staircase. She hoped she had not been too indiscreet. Perhaps she had allowed herself to say too much, but to her surprise Balin nodded without breaking the pace.

  
"For a long time, I was one of his teachers. Since he was just a child, I have been at his side."

Ghìda smiled to herself, imagining Thorin Oakenshield as just a child running through the same corridors she was walking at the time. A little dwarf who did not know that he would be the salvation of his people.

"You must be proud of what he has achieved, and what he has become then."

  
"I am. Very much. He's a good king, I knew I'd follow him to Mandos and back my lady." He admitted them proudly, stopping at the top of the stairs.

  
Ghìda turned her head, looking at the enormous archway that opened the way to a single suspended in the void, with at the center of it a huge throne crowned by a stalactite with golden veins.

"From here I think it's better if you go on alone." Balin said, taking a step back and a short bow, spreading his arms again. "King Thorin will be with you shortly." He watched her attentively. The girl stared at the room without moving a step, even though he had invited her in. Then, she looked at her hands, white knuckles clutching the cloth and her chest moving rhythmically. "Don't stress yourself, my lady, everything will be all right." He tried to cheer her up and succeeded, or at least he thought he did, noticing her hands melting from the tangle of fabrics of the red dress she was wearing.

  
"Thank you, Balin son of Fundin." And with that last greeting from the girl, Balin left the room, leaving her alone, and at the mercy of his worries, which, though the old dwarf had tried, had not yet disappeared.

  
Intimidated, she watched the huge arch above her and slowly passed over it, making her catch her breath in her throat. Dozens of ancient statues of dwarf kings more or less in good condition surrounded the room, watching over the throne.

A huge window lit from behind the immense throne suspended in mid-air in the middle of the room, at the top of four long corridors that crossed it like a cross.

Above it a block of rock, as a culmination, in which illuminated golden veins made a lightshow inside the room. The only noise that could be heard at that moment was her footsteps along the stone slab, accompanied by the shuffling of his sleeves on the marble. The golden inlays enriched every pillar, every capital of the columns. It was intruiguing to wonder what it had been like in its splendour, illuminated by huge braziers. Her knees trembled just at that vision. She imagined what they had to feel the dwarves who had visited it at the height of its beauty.

She slowly approached the throne. Thorin was not yet there. She was alone, in the middle of the huge room. She observed the engravings in Khuzdul that adorned the throne, almost as if she did not want to believe it. She reached out to one of them. The hard stone under her fingertips made her jerk slightly. She went round and round, slowly, studying every fortune she saw, and reading every rune.

She frowned, looking up, above the backrest. The stone was split in half, leaving a huge hole, but next to it, an element made her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. A hole, slightly larger than a fist, towered over the seat. It was empty there was nothing, but its shape was too perfect, too precise.

  
_"And the Arkenstone a within reach of your hand."_

  
She quickly drew her hand away from the marble as her father's words came back to her mind. The king's jewel. That was where it was kept. She called herself a fool, if not on the king's throne, where it could be, the mizim of Durin.

  
"He too will be repaired when the time comes." A deep voice that rumbled through the whole room startled her. So lost in her thoughts she hadn't noticed that Thorin Oakenshield had entered the enormous hall from a doorway to the side of the throne. The crown was not on his head, and the regal robes of the day before had disappeared, giving way to a light, dark-coloured armor. But even without them he could give off an aura of grandeur that made the room around her seem as small as a den.

She quickly retreated away from the throne as if she had caught it fragrant, but of what she didn't know.

"King Thorin." She paid homage to the dwarf as he approached her, making a small reverence.

As the day before she felt like an inexperienced maiden, what was happening to her? She was not like that, she was a warrior, a prince's daughter, not a companion. But then why was she so afraid?

"Forgive me." she apologized. She didn't know what it was either, maybe more about her emotions than something that really happened.

  
_"You'll just have to be gorgeous, smiling, obedient and complacent."_

Perhaps it was better that he felt that way at that moment, what would a dwarf king want if not a complacent woman at his side?

Thorin, on the other hand, was slightly annoyed at the condescending tone of the girl in front of him. He would have expected anything, a block of ice like the day before, for example, but to his surprise, the girl's eyes seemed to him the same, full of emotion, that he had spotted the day before. He had waited a few seconds to reveal himself. He had watched her from afar for a few minutes, intrigued by the way she looked around her as she walked down the long corridor. It had made him think of a little girl who saw a throne for the first time, in total contrast to the leader who had led the troops down the valley of Erebor. 

There was more to her than what she wanted to shine through, and not that there was little to shine through.

She was beautiful. That he could not deny either, but he had met dozens of elves, and women of other races, but she was different from anything he had ever seen. She was a unique beauty. She was not as ethereal as her woodland achievements, nor as carnal as dwarves.

Silly childish thoughts, that was all that mattered. She was an arrangement, that's all, and that's all that had to stay. Such thoughts were better to remain hidden.

Thorin did not answer, advancing only towards the throne, looking up. As she in his head looked like a child, so did Thorin, who passed his melancholy eyes over the dark veins.

  
"You should have seen this room years ago." he said to her with a sigh. She looked up at him, looking at his twisted face in an almost melancholy expression, whilst the king's face remained glued to the high throne.

"The daylight illuminating the marble and the noise of the forges filling the air." he told her, turning around and looking into her eyes with a look that she couldn't decipher.

  
But Ghìda felt terribly bitter. Everyone knew the story, everyone knew what they had lost, what Thorin Oakenshield had lost.

"If it was once like that, there is no denying it can happen again." She tried to comfort him, but the King Under the Mountain probably didn't need it, because he shook his head looking at it as if he had said something obvious, but smiling the same with the side of his mouth. "The dwarves of Elcar and the Iron Hills are working hard, hundreds of them are working outside right now."

  
Thorin slipped an almost amused sneer as he lowered his gaze almost to hide it.

"My cousin does not really enjoy your company." he said dryly as he approached her, his hands behind his back and his eyes boring into hers. A shiver up her back made her straighten up immediately. The sound of that statement made her jump like a spring.

She had hoped not to find herself talking about it again, but she must have been expecting it from the moment she met Dàin outside the walls.

  
"And it disturbs you?" she asked directly, sending to rot all her father's recommendations about her being condescending and meek.

He had succeeded. He had touched a nerve, and again she had looked at him with the look he had sought in her eyes as soon as he entered the room. Cold as ice, but passionate as fire.

  
"It should, but it doesn't bother me." he responded, bending his head slightly and walking, starting to study his reactions. "His problems are his own."

  
Seen from outside they looked like two animals that were slowly studying each other, each trying to understand the other's reasons. Thorin had to figure out if he could trust a stranger. She wondered if the dwarf king despised her for what she was.

"And you have no problem with that?"

  
Ghìda's dark eyes were pointed into Thorin's ice eyes, which were still impossible for her to resolve.

Without the two of them realizing it, they were now facing the throne, one a few inches from the other with their breasts almost touching each other. Unaware of themselves, attracted to each other. Both perceived a strange energy, something that made them remain silent waiting for a word from the other, they would not collapse, both too proud or too cowardly to break the silence.

  
A heavy step interrupted Ghìda's accelerated heartbeats and made Thorin take a couple of steps away from her and turn his face towards the figure in the back of the room. A large dark-bearded dwarf had advanced beyond the row of arches at the entrance of the hall panting slightly. His face was covered with black soot and the long shirt pulled up to his forearms showed a pair of long work gloves. As soon as he entered, he stood still for a few moments, looking down at her, raised an eyebrow and then turned his attention to Thorin.

  
"Thorin, I'm sorry to interrupt, but we need you at the forges. Bifur can't get the forges up and Dàin's dwarves don't know where to put their hands."

  
"I'll join you Dwalin. Send Balin to the Kings Galleries." Thorin responded authoritatively, making the stocky dwarf nod, before turning his back and walking away, threw a glance at her that to her eyes seemed not at all friendly. In the meantime, fortuitously interrupted by the dwarf, he had lost all his rigidity and composure, returning to having, at least from the outside, the posture of a young girl. But the king's lack of response had done nothing but make her climb an uncontrolled anguish.

  
Incomprehensible.

  
The answer in Ghida's head was clear, of course it was a problem. He was the dwarf king and she was nothing but a being who belonged to nothing and to no one.

For Thorin, however, the answer was not so simple. Was her blood a problem for him? Was it possible to make her his by ignoring every thought or opinion? The line between duty and will became blurred in his head. Had she been a dwarf, would she have disgusted him? No, it did not disgust him even now, but the hatred that ran through him towards the people who had turned their backs on him many times, and had turned their backs on his people, did not give him an answer, not even to himself.

  
Returning to the real world, Ghida cleared his voice by taking a few steps back with reverence, not even waiting for an answer from Thorin, having also lost the desire to hear it.

"I seem to have kept you all too long."

  
He nodded away still slightly with his head, fearing that the proximity between them would reset again. "We'll have time to talk again." He replied, still slightly shaken, but she did not give him to see Ghìda who interpreted his words as a means to get out of the situation.

  
"Some rooms have been prepared for you. Can you find your way back to the King's gallery? Balin will wait for you there to show them to you."

  
"Yes, my king." She replied by taking a short bow with his head. Ready to leave, she turned her torso over, but a thought held her there where she was. A thought that would not have left her head if she had not immediately exposed it. And as she was no longer in control of herself, she vomited it, without being able to hold back her words.

  
"King Thorin!" she called after him, drawing his gaze towards her. "I have yet to tell you how sorry I am for your loss."

  
Thorin was bewildered at first. He did not understand the reason for such a statement at the end of a meeting that was about something else.

  
"I know my words may seem circumstantial, but I watched you on the day of the funeral, and listened to your words. To take me as your wife to fill such a void is a devastating thing, I'm aware of that, you know?" She stopped for a moment whilst Thorin watched her, listening attentively. "Such an important decision, made at such a time, gives you much honour." she concluded whist Thorin remained silent, saying nothing. The eyes were the mirror of the soul, that of the king was impenetrable as an armor, if he was trying something, he hid it well.

When she received no answer, she turned, her back to him, and began to walk away beyond the arches.

  
"Honour does not mitigate loss. The dead remain dead." she heard the king speak in a deep voice behind her.

This time, however, when she turned, she did not see a proud, emotionless king hidden behind an impenetrable veil of royalty. Only a dwarf who had seen too much and lost too much. For the first time, she saw a deep sadness in the dwarf's eyes. He was a dwarf who had sacrificed everything to be where he was, to have his home back.

  
"No but they give him purpose." she sentenced him as she left the room, leaving behind her a Thorin who, incredulously, continued to observe where she had left from, with the answer to her question on the tip of his tongue.

Without looking back, Ghìda descended the long flights of stairs, trying to remember exactly where she had passed with the old dwarf just before the meeting with Thorin. But getting her bearings had never seemed so difficult in her life. She was dazed by everything that had happened in the throne room. From the moment she laid eyes on him, she couldn't take her eyes off him anymore, something was orbiting her. He was her king, that was normal, but the feeling she had felt in her bowels as soon as she had approached him only a little, it was not fear, it was not fear, it was more like a rope being pulled towards him unintentionally.

  
_"And you don't have a problem with that?"_

  
What was she thinking? That he'd say no? That everything would end with, _"I don't care what you are, it's not your fault"?_

Of course it mattered!

She stopped stone dead in the middle of a flight of stairs pointing his feet and looking down and biting her lip so hard she hurt himself. She wasn't a dwarf, she never would be. She would never be a wife or a queen worthy of the name. Her father kept saying that all dwarves would love her, but would he? Then why? Why did he agree to it? And why did she keep asking those silly questions? Her head span so much that she put her hands on her face and took a deep breath of air. She was not a child, she could not react as such. She was a woman. Certain feelings had buried them with her pain in a pit as deep as Erebor itself. They couldn't come back to the light even when she was alone, because making it happen would have meant only one thing: an inexorable fall into a dead end chasm. A chasm made of memories, pains and sleepless nights, decades of shame and disappointment that she had to keep hidden from the world, even more so from the King Under the Mountain.

  
She lifted her chest, inhaling the air in front of her, trying to calm herself, to erase those thoughts from her head, but a slight lament made her eyes gleam. In the total silence, if it had not been for a remote voice, a faint and rhythmic crying, rumbled from an indefinite part of the enormous halls. As her eyebrows became confused, she began to descend the steps more slowly, scrutinizing every single corridor, every single staircase, but the cry remained faint in the air, until a small figure bent over herself attracted her attention.

  
Sitting on a step, not far from her, on a staircase on her right, a little girl was hunched over, sobbing. Ghìda looked around, bewildered that there was no one there and that such a small child had arrived there, in the bowels of the palace, alone. A squeeze came to her heart, feeling a hiccup stronger than the others coming out of the small figure whose shoulders trembled.

Slowly she came closer so as not to frighten her. She had never been good with children -so few were seen in Elcar- but she could not leave her there alone. Anything could have happened to her. Leaning slightly forward, she approached silently to the step where the little dwarf was sitting, with her face hidden in her knees.

  
"Little one, are you all right?" she asked worried, lowering her knees to the height of the little girl. She had not noticed her, in fact she jumped slightly, looking up from her knees. Two big green eyes were staring at her intimidated, long red locks were attached to her face, wet with tears, that didn't stop and silently kept going down. She must have been six years old at most.

He approached her calmly, carrying a hand slightly forward as if to reassure her, trying not to upset her more than she already was.

"What's your name?" She asked her politely, holding her dress with one hand and sitting on the steps in front of the little creature who kept staring at her, intimidated, considering whether she could reveal her name to a complete stranger.

  
"N-Nim." She answered her by continuing to keep his little knees to his chest.

  
"Greetings, Nim. My name is Ghìda." He told her smiling kindly while she continued to cry silently. Who knows how long she was there alone and no one had heard her. "Why are you crying? Are you lost?" she asked her to calm her as much as possible.

The little one nodded at her, moving fast, swinging the little silver pendants in her hair.

  
"A-mad was next to me, then I turned around and she was gone." she answered with more confidence in her voice, pulling up her nose noisily, while silent tears wet the dark dress she wore.

Ghìda sighed sadly, and though hesitant, she came even closer to her, dragging himself a step closer.

"I've lost my friend too, you know?" she smiled kindly and lied to her to calm her down. "What do you say we go find your mommy for you? Maybe we can find my friend too."

  
The technique seemed to work; Nìm in fact raised his eyes towards her, squinting and pulling up herr nose one more time whilst the tears slowly ended.

"R-really, my lady?"

  
"Yes, of course." she nodded. Ghìda got up from the ground and extended her hand as an invitation to take her. "Let's go. It'll take the two of us less time."

The red-haired little girl stood up, nodded and dried her eyes with both hands, before grabbing Ghìda's still outstretched hand with one of hers. "Thank you, my lady." She felt her heart give her another tumble when after cleaning her eyes she gave her an innocent smile.

Holding her small hand in hers, the lady began to guide her through the long corridors, thanking her innate sense of direction that was helping her to remember the road. It wasn't hard to understand why the little girl next to her had lost her way. Erebor was a real maze of tunnels. She had been all too good at not getting deeper into the mountain.

In the meantime, her little travelling companion observed her, scratching her eyes from time to time, but Ghìda didn't notice her so absorbed in her thoughts, that when she finally spoke to her, she made a little jump.

  
"Where-where did you come from?" He asked her now in a calm tone, shaking her hand even more. "Have you travelled far?"

  
The question caused her eyebrows to dart down a little, but she immediately understood: she must have arrived with the caravans she had seen that morning. She smiled kindly at her, but always keeping an eye on the corridors they were taking.

  
"I come from the Yellow Mountains. A place far away from here."

  
"My family from the Blue Mountains. We walked a lot, but my brother Fàrim made me ride his pony for a while." she said to her proudly, and smiling. It was incredible, how the purest despair had passed in such a short time to jump beside her holding her hand.

  
"You must have been very good then. Riding a pony is not easy."

  
"My big brother held me. A-mam says the pony's too big for me alone." She did, however, make a disappointed expression, shaking her amused head.

  
"You'll see that one day you'll ride a pony by yourself." Ghìda reassured her by making her smile again like before, if not more.

  
"Really, my lady?"

  
"Of course, a virtuous little girl like you, why shouldn't she?" she confirmed, making her leap for joy higher than the others, but then her eyes suddenly darkened.

And it took her a moment to understand why. They stood beneath two great stone dwarves framing a long staircase that descended. They had almost reached the Halls of Kings. If the Valars had wanted to, she would have left Nìm there with her parents.

  
"A-dad said this was his fathers' house." the girl said, also grabbing her with the other hand, her intimidated by the two enormous stone dwarfs who watched them as they passed over them.

  
"And you don't like it?" she asked her intrigued, reminded her of herself on the day of the council as soon as she set foot in the mountain.

Nìm came even closer to her now, so close to her leg that her hair rubbed against her dress skirt.

  
"There was snow at home, and we could drink warm milk in front of the fireplace." she said looking around in fear. "Everything here is so dark." she whispered intimidated in her footsteps. Although she understood her dismay, she tried to reassure her as best he could.

"I'm sure you'll like it. You just have to get used to it."

The little one shook her head quickly, clinging to her dress even more, leaving her hands. "But I don't want to get used to it, I want to go home!" she cried almost at the brink of tears once again. A sad breath came out of Ghìda's nostrils. She understood her feelings, she too wanted to return home terribly. She wanted to return to see her beloved white shores and the immense black beaches of Elcar, but now her place was here. Her life was here like Nìm's, who was now looking sadly on the ground and stopped walking.

  
Ghìda lowered herself, bending down on her knees, taking both her hands gently and holding them in her own.

"You know, I didn't want to come here either, I wanted to stay in my city, with the smell of the sea seeping into the rocks in my room. But I can assure you, Nìm, that your home is where your family is." For a moment she hesitated biting her lip. She could feel her heart beating faster and faster. "Where there is love. Do you have love for your family?" She couldn't say whether the words of encouragement were more for Nìm or herself, or whether she really believed what she had said, but it didn't matter at the time, because the little figure in front of her smiled slightly nodding at her.

  
"Then you'll like it sooner or later." Ghìda finally told her, taking a tuft behind her ear and moving it from her cheek. "Just have patience." she concluded gently, and in doing so the little girl clenched her hand even harder as she walked with her towards the immense golden hall that was now just a few steps away from them.

  
A lump in her throat formed, noticing how much had changed since that little time had passed. Now hundreds of dwarves were walking through the hall, heading to the different parts of the palace. Loads of belongings and carts full of all kinds of objects. All the families who had previously been outside had entered the mountain, making it a busy Illithien trade route. Nìm, close to her, held her hand even more as she searched with her eyes she didn't even know what: how would she find her parents? Figures upon figures took turns in front of her, creating huge rows that didn't even allow her to see the end of the room.

  
" _A-MAD!_ " The little girl next to Ghìda slipped out of the grip suddenly making her eyes pop out. She was about to chase her, when in the crowd, not far from her, she saw her red head running all over the room jumping into the arms of a dwarf with equally colored hair. The dwarf lady bent down and took her in her arms and held her tight.

  
"Thank Durin! Nìm, you're alright!" She kissed her hair repeatedly, holding her to herself. "You made me so worried." she whispered in her hair and then suddenly changed her attitude, and with a hard, serious look, she grabbed her shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes. "Don't you ever try to get away from me again, do you understand?"

  
Ghìda in the meantime had approached the scene with her eyes between melancholy and calm. The scene had closed her heart, between the happiness of the little girl or the worry of the girl's mother, she didn't know which was better. She felt a slight twinge in her chest when lightly, though still with the serious air she wanted to show off, Nim's mother cleaned her dress with one hand, dirty with dust. She had never had all that, an a-mad.

Nìm nodded quickly staring at her mother, "Y-Yes a-mad, forgive me. But the lady gave me a hand!" He said, turning around, smiling at her and taking small steps, pointing at her with his small hand. "My friend Ghìda, she accompanied me."

  
The little girl's mother looked up at the lady, who in the meantime had remained silent but smiling towards Nìm, at first confused, with her forehead wrinkled, and then opening her eyes wide as soon as she heard his name.

"For Mahal ..." she said to herself, and as she stood up from the ground, from where she had stooped with her daughter. She quickly stared at her, still looking for the right words with his eyes closed. Ghìda bit her lip in front of this behaviour, she looked as if she had seen a ghost, and suddenly the dwarf in front of her made a deep bow and lowered her gaze. The gesture did not go unnoticed, in fact several dwarfs around them stopped their chores by pointing their eyes at her, and a look of disbelief was painted on their faces as well.

"M-my... my lady, I am, I am mortified. There are no words of apology for..." Ghìda shook her head, interrupting her, not understanding the reason for all that worry or reverence, "Please forgive my daughter's trouble."

"Please don't." Ghìda told her, worried as she got closer as little Nìm watched her confused mother still bent over. "Your daughter's company entertained me, and in any case did not disturb me. You have a lovely daughter." she said sweetly, looking towards the little girl who was smiling proudly at her in the meantime.

  
"Thank you, my lady!" said the little dwarf, grabbing her mother's skirt, while she looked up at Ghìda, still in shock. Of all the people who could bring Nìm back to her, the promise of King Thorin himself.

  
"My lady, there you are. I was beginning to worry." A fourth voice was added to the conversation. Balin was taking quick steps towards her, wheezing. He had checked every corner of the room looking for her, only when he had heard some dwarves from the Blue Mountains saying her name in a low voice could he find her.

  
"Come on, let's go. Your father and brothers are worried." said the mother to the little girl who jumped up and held her hand while nodding. "Thank you, m-my lady." she said to her again with a tone of reverence before lowering her gaze and starting to walk away without even giving her time to answer her or say goodbye to little Nim.

  
"My lady. Thank you, for helping me!" Nìm shouted at her, waving her arm as her mother dragged her away to the inner rooms and whispering something to her, but not attracting the attention of her daughter, who continued to glance behind her smiling. The innocent gesture made Ghìda smile to herself, and although slightly embarrassed, she in turn greeted her with her hand, whilst her little figure disappeared behind rows and rows of dwarves.

  
"Have you made friends?" She was joined by Balin, who in the meantime had remained silent beside her.

  
"A pleasant company. She was lost upstairs. She sat not far from the throne room." she answered, staring into the crowd as if she still had to be careful that Nim didn't get lost.

  
Balin straightened his chest as soon as he heard the words throne room and clearing his voice, looking at the profile of the young half-elf who was still staring into the crowd, had the courage to ask the fateful question.

"If I may say so, how did it go?" he asked curious. The thought of knowing more about the whole thing made him nervous and restless. Thorin did not have a good temper, especially with strangers. He was stubborn, arrogant, and even rough as an ogre when it came to commitment.

  
She frowned at the jerky question by biting her lip and not being able to control the redness that colored her cheeks. The weight in her heart returned, making her swallow noisily and tighten the fabric of her dress.

"It could have been worse." she answered, looking towards the dwarf next to her.

  
And with that Balin he got his answer:

It had gone well, very well.

_**A-mad= Mother** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Authors corner  
> And here I am for you (with a great delay) with the chapter of the eagerly awaited meeting. If you have been a bit dry-mouthed I ask your forgiveness but there will be a lot of meat on the fire in the next chapters. And above all, can you imagine someone like Thorin having a conversation with tea and pastries? XD The initial scene I know it's very boring, but I need to give you a general overview of what's happening in Erebor, and especially sorry for being so often so cold that in the descriptions or protracted but I think it's very important to launch into the setting. Anyway, Dwalin is still the best party pooper, but a bit of angst is good for us, also because he remains quite in line with the character. The past of Ghìda I want it to remain always a bit 'a mystery, at least for a while' if not from the next one, from the next one you'll have a wider vision on the relationship with his mother, which remains a bit 'a mystery for me too, not that I don't know but it will be difficult to write I think. At the end of my rant, tell me: Was that your favorite part? Thorin, what do you think of his answer? And please tell me your theories. I'm too curious. And most of all, how adorable is Nim? Ahahahahah and poor Balin is always cleaning up after himself.  
> BTW i want to thank all the poepl who left kuuuudos subbed and also who left a comment, its so nice i swear i love to hear your teories or feelings, a huge kiss and stay safe in these hard times.


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